


Creative Writing: The Ins And Outs

by Morningstar (Morningstar_Decepticon)



Category: Homework - Fandom, N/A - Fandom, Real life - Fandom
Genre: Gen, So Basically Small Prompts And Poems, This Is Where I Am Going To Work On My Creative Writing Assignments, Working For That Degree
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-11
Updated: 2019-10-06
Packaged: 2019-10-26 09:46:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 23,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17743571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morningstar_Decepticon/pseuds/Morningstar
Summary: I need a place to work on my assignments, and I don't want to place the work in Random or in School work with my programming stuff. So I am placing it here. Maybe the prompts here will become their own thing later, but for now I am going to work on whats in the book I bought for $100.This is also because my work actually allows this site so yeah.





	1. Character As Desire, Action, Image, Voice, Thought, Conflict

Anna was a young woman of 19, with chocolate brown hair and a lithe form. She wore a simple white dress as she walked the beach, the dress strapless and the small frills catching in the wind. She wore a backpack on her back, which was only partially filled. Her gaze was downward, looking around the sands as she slowly made step by step against the shore line. Anna was looking for seashells, despite the earlier fight with her mother to stay inside. She was a collector of many things, seashells being personal to her. When she was first learning to walk, her grandfather brought her to the beach for the first time, showing her the wonders that was the ocean. After marveling at the creatures and sensations of the waters, her grandfather had shown her a seashell. That first seashell was now around her neck, held there by a string.  
Anna sighed softly, feeling a small vibration in the pocket of her backpack. Her mother was undoubtedly trying to reach her and demand her that she return to the house. The phone now ignored, Anna kneeled to pick up an object in the sand. Ah! A baby’s ear, duly named to its shape. Her lips crawled upwards, a fond memory coming to her mind. Her grandfather had gifted many of these to her mother when they all found out she was pregnant, saying that they would be good luck. Such good luck that came from it, when Anna came out sick and dying. When she was 7, she found the box full of baby’s ears. She knew what they were due to her time with her grandfather, but she took them immediately to him to ask why her mother, of all people, had them.   
Sliding off her backpack slowly, she opened it up to grab one of her many boxes she specially created. Opening the box, the inside was covered in soft, cushy fabric, her own design to help the shells not break during her searches. She placed the baby’s ear gently inside, before locking the box up tight.


	2. Imagery - Fear

The room is of stone and mold, the light so dim, the shadows dominate the area. They move silently, hauntingly, stalkily, around you, searching for you. The huge wooden door, easily openable before, is now locked, leaving you trapped in this room. Noises are coming from behind you, guttural growling that is not in any form of human or animal you have heard of before.


	3. Landscapes - Red Dawn

The tall weeds tickle my sides as I walk on the soft ground. They are as nearly tall as I am, hiding me from the reddening background. As my gaze goes upwards, I watch as the sky becomes a gradient of yellows, oranges, and reds, the clouds bringing in a very visible maroon to the sky. As I take a breath, the air is filled with the smells of home. The scent of flowers, sweet and yet at the same time sour, fills my lungs. I hear the crickets chirping as the night begins to fall, the calls of all animals for their young and herd to come in for the night.


	4. Stars Like Diamonds - Prompt

The sky was dark, the sun long since set under the horizon. It wasn’t pitch black like so many claim it to be, like when we were young and coloring in the sky on a piece of paper with a black crayon. It was more like a deep blue, a blue so dark it seemed like black, but it held just enough of a gentle color that you could make out the light against the dark. Overhead, was the full moon, it’s light washing over us. The moon was bigger than normal, from what I could see. We both could see the craters and the lunar seas of it with not much focusing. What honestly caught my eyes were the millions of stars scattered across the blanket-like sky, shining and twinkling, begging for our attentions. They shimmered, like glitter. Each one faintly glowed with a different color, just far enough they seemed white, but you could feel the reds, blues, and yellows of each one. I smiled slightly as I caught eye of Orion, the hunter in the sky, with his belt. My first friend, continuously hunting for Scorpio, eternally searching for his killer. I had to stifle a laugh. Scorpio, my sign and my guardian, hid and searched on the other side of the world. The two would never see the same sky together, always chasing, always stalking. It was like the other stars twinkled with sadistic glee at the chase, watching as the two ran after the other, never getting closer. The stars were like diamonds, alright. Blood diamonds.


	5. Phone, Cookie, Saint - Words Prompt

I couldn’t help but glance at my phone, it always nearby and ready to show me the notifications. I had to keep it close, knowing that I am always needed on a moment’s notice. Paranoia is a wonderful trait to have when so many people rely on you. What if Kerra got another flat? What if Panda needed help? What if Matt needed assistance with Grandma? What if-  
“Sis, would you like a cookie?”  
I’m snapped out of my thoughts to see my little sister holding out a plate of her homemade chocolate chip cookies, the homey smell wafting through the air. My tense features relax, melting into a gentle smile as I take one.  
“Thanks kiddo.”  
“Of course! You look like you need one.”  
“Cookies are a cure-all for all sorts of problems, eh?”  
“Yep! That’s why I make them so much!”  
I take a bite, and the cookie is warm and soft, just the right combination of chewy and firmness I like. I look to my sister, who gives our mother several of them before taking the plate to the kitchen table, where it will reside with all the other fantastical treats she made. She is a Saint, blessed to us from whatever gods rule over our world. She cares for us, helps us, laughs with us, loves us, and most certainly bakes for us. I just wish I could have seen the darkness in her eyes before it came to the light.


	7. Retorical Essay Topic

Who's the Daddy?  
Summary: "Imagine discovering that your birth certificate is a lie and that your true biological father was a sperm donor who also fathered hundreds of other children. It's a reality for more people than you might think...Welcome to the world of sperm donation, where this is just one of many issues that stir up deep emotions, trigger polarised views, cause heated debates and lead to everything from heartfelt campaigning to downright foolish decision making. Powerful incentives are at stake here -- women desperate to have babies, the fertility industry seeking big profits and many donor-conceived offspring claiming their basic human rights are being violated." (The Independent) This article discusses the moral implications of using few sperm donors to father hundreds of children.   
• With only nine donors, is the national sperm bank sowing too little seed? And can such artificial insemination end up hurting some women and children? Kate Hilpern reports   
Imagine discovering that your birth certificate is a lie and that your true biological father was a sperm donor who also fathered hundreds of other children. It's a reality for more people than you might think.   
Barry Stevens, who found out he was donor conceived (DC) when he was 18, discovered through DNA tests that his biological father, Bertold Wiesner, had up to 600 children. Wiesner founded the London Barton clinic in the 1940s, promising to provide sperm donors from "intelligent stock", and there is evidence to suggest that around two-thirds of the children born to couples using this clinic were his.   
In a similarly unsettling discovery, Jo Rose learnt that at the time of her donor conception, in the early 1970s, there was a small number of medical students from Barts NHS Trust -- most of them now high-profile doctors -- who donated sperm time and time again up and down Harley Street, essentially cornering the market.   
"In my search for my own father, I met one of them and he said that this handful of men treated the clinics as a 'wank bank', and estimated that he and each of his friends have between one and 300 children," explains Rose. Add to this the estimated thousands of people in the UK who don't even know they're donor conceived (historically, clinics encouraged parents to keep it secret) and you start to see a disturbing picture.   
The man from Barts admitted to being deeply troubled by the biological and moral consequences of his nave choice to treat reproductive material as on par with blood to be donated (the more the merrier), says Rose, who has also suffered emotionally from the creepy discovery that she may have scores of half-siblings out there. "Before I met my partner, I used to worry I might wind up having a relationship with one of them unwittingly, as research shows people are likely to be attracted to someone they have some genetic commonality with," she adds.   
Since 2006, UK guidelines suggest that a maximum of 10 families should use sperm from the same donor. But there have already been six cases where donor sperm created more than 10 families, and the British Fertility Society is keen to "revaluate" the limit anyway. Moreover, sperm is regularly imported from abroad (notably America and Denmark, the so-called sperm capital of the world), meaning that many donor-conceived children are still growing up with an absurd numbers of siblings.   
"Even under current UK guidelines, if one donor produces four children per family, that's still a potential of 40 offspring per donor," says Julia Feast, research and development consultant at the children's charity CoramBAAF, who has a special interest in people's right to access to information about their genetic origins.   
Welcome to the world of sperm donation, where this is just one of many issues that stir up deep emotions, trigger polarised views, cause heated debates and lead to everything from heartfelt campaigning to downright foolish decision making. Powerful incentives are at stake here -- women desperate to have babies, the fertility industry seeking big profits and many donor-conceived offspring claiming their basic human rights are being violated.   
Last week, the subject hit headlines when it was reported that only nine men are registered as donors a year after the opening of Britain's national sperm bank. For many who are hoping to conceive using donor sperm, the news will have felt devastating. Why the shortage, demanded journalists, and what can be done about it? Others, including Kamal Ahuja, managing director of the London Sperm Bank, were bemused by the news. "It's fundamentally untrue that there's a shortage of sperm. London Sperm Bank, which provides sperm to 26 private and NHS clinics, has an excess," he says. (There are 50-odd "banks" in Britain, with a few hundred donors between them.)   
And then there were those who were frankly relieved at the thought of a drop in sperm donor numbers, pointing to research such as the 2010 American study, "My Daddy's Name is Donor", which found that "young adults conceived through sperm donation are hurting more, are more confused and feel more isolated from their families". The report continues, "They fare worse than their peers raised by biological families on important outcomes such as depression, delinquency and substance abuse."   
Laura Witjens, chief executive of the National Gamete Donation Trust (NGDT), a government-funded charitable body whose job it is to promote egg and sperm donation in the UK, has a more nuanced view. In fact, she says, there has been a rise in donor numbers over the years, but "it has failed to keep pace with the dramatic increase in demand for sperm, particularly from lesbian couples and single women". Indeed, according to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), between 2010 and 2011, there was a 24 per cent increase in the number of lesbian couples undergoing donor insemination. "Then there's the fact that, whilst many clinics do have enough sperm, many NHS patients, particularly those in certain geographical areas, can face a waiting list of over a year - longer still, if they're from an ethnic minority."   
Witjens -- an egg donor herself, who was attracted to the industry after feeling, even as a young woman, that she'd have done "anything illegal, immoral or unethical to have children" -- says the lack of equal access is the very reason the national sperm bank, of which she is also chief executive, was set up last year. Based at the Birmingham Women's Hospital and funded by the Department of Health, its aim is to provide a central store of sperm for both private and NHS clinics so that they no longer have to buy from overseas and so that fewer women resort to alternatives (more of which later).   
Although Witjens admits that nine sounds a paltry figure, she says that they only need 13 to break even financially by March 2016.   
"And it's important to bear in mind that for 13 donors whose sperm we can actually use, that means testing the sperm of 130, and to test 130 means reaching hundreds or thousands more because many drop out during the process." Witjens believes there are four obstacles currently preventing more men coming forward. "First, lack of awareness. We want men to think of this like blood donation -- something altruistic. Second, there's a stigma. Everyone knows that for guys to donate sperm, they are getting paid to have a wank and many British people see that as smutty. Third, we are asking a lot from healthy men in the prime of their life, as donors have to go to clinic twice a week for three to four months, then give blood for a further six months [to check for HIV]. We also ask them to refrain from sex two days before masturbating, in order to get the best sperm. If guys aren't put off by that, which many are, there's the fact that for 80 to 90 percent of them, their sperm fails. It may be fine for normal life, but this sperm has to be frozen and the thawing can kill it. Or we may find there's something that disqualifies them -- perhaps they're overweight or they have a genetic disease in the family."   
The change in UK law in 2005, which removed anonymity for all donors and gave donor-conceived children the right to identify their genetic parents once they reached 18, is also believed to be a factor. "In the UK, you have shot yourself in both feet and knees, with such strict regulation," believes Ole Schou, who set up the world's largest sperm bank, Cryos International in Denmark, which exports to over 80 countries. "The fact is, most potential donors don't want to be identifiable," he says, explaining that in Denmark, they can choose. Also, he claims, "if you ask heterosexual couples whether they'd prefer an anonymous donor or non-anonymous, we find the absolute majority say anonymous, which is why so many go abroad. The very fact that, when they come home, they are not punished -- conversely, everyone is usually very pleased for them -- shows what a strange regulation it is."   
Indeed, Schou explains how he has found a loophole so that British people don't even have to go overseas to find sperm donors with anonymity. The British rules, he explains, don't apply if you deliver directly to people's homes, rather than to clinics, meaning that anyone in the UK can buy sperm from him, with a home-insemination kit included in the package.   
Schou (whose company once ceased taking donations from ginger-haired men due to lack of demand) compares fertility treatment to abortion in that everyone agrees it's not a good thing; but if you don't allow it, people either go abroad or to the grey market -- in this case, anything from informal introduction services such as the website Pride Angel, which operates like a dating site, right through to unregulated online infertility forums, where donors use screen names such as bigD and offer their unscreened, untested and sometimes unsafe sperm for free. "We know it can go right, but it can also go spectacularly wrong," says Witjens. "I've spoken to women who've met a guy, having agreed to insemination, only to wind up giving him a hand-job or sex. For some, the joy of being pregnant takes over, but others feel violated."   
Some years ago, Witjens wanted to know the real story of this grey market, so she posted as a woman looking for a donor online. "I'm Dutch and not easily shocked, but I received videos of men wanking right through to some disturbing claims about their sperm. But women get desperate and put themselves at risk -- not just themselves, but the children they may go on to have. At least with Cryos, the sperm is safe."   
Aiming to overcome such problems, Witjens is planning a new recruitment campaign, to focus on UK men having the power to change lives. "We considered appealing to male pride in the way they do in Denmark -- the Superman message that says, 'Men, prove your worth, show me how good you are!' -- but if we link masculinity to fertility, are we saying men who are less fertile are less men?"   
Both are extraordinarily misguided messages, believes Jo Rose, who has spent most of her adult life battling for the human rights of donor-conceived people and whose efforts were largely responsible for the UK's 2005 ban on anonymity. What Rose wants -- along with the campaign and support groups for donor-conceived people that are springing up all over the world, including Tangled Webs UK, Anonymous Us in the US and Donor Offspring Europe -- is for professionals and those thinking of using donors to consider the potential emotional impact on any offspring, even those born after 2005, who will have the right to know their genetic identity.   
And in this, she has the support of CoramBAAF. "Contrary to popular opinion, the 2005 law has not solved all the problems for today's DC children," explains Julia Feast. "There's much more openness now, particularly among lesbian couples and single parents, but many parents still bring up their children with no intention of telling them. However, that doesn't mean their offspring won't pick up on something being different and many suffer because of it. In addition, these people lack their accurate medical histories, which can have and has had some dire consequences. Then there's the fact that many find out later in life and feel totally deceived and devastated. It's not a minority. There are lots of these stories."   
One solution is a birth registration reform, "so that everyone, not just donor-conceived people, has the right to know they have a different status," she says. Thus, there would be two birth certificates: "A short one showing the legal parentage, which can be used for situations such as job applications, and a longer one to show if you are adopted, donor-conceived or under special guardianship. It wouldn't even need to give the identifying information, just show where you need to ask. It's already in place for adopted people and works well. And we know that, if parents know it's there in black and white for children to see when they're older, they're far more likely to tell the truth."   
Emma Creswell, 27, has gone further. Having discovered that she was donor-conceived as an adult, she won a six-year battle last year to have the name of the man she thought was her father removed from her birth certificate altogether. "I still don't know the identity of my biological father, so now there's a blank. To me, it means a lot. It's the truth. It's who I am," says Creswell, whose success could lead to further cases.   
While many donor-conceived adults have benefited from contacting some of their genetic half-siblings (Barry Stevens is in contact with 11 of his), Tom is among the five parent-child matches made so far through the Donor Conceived Register, which aims to bring interested donor parents and children together through DNA matching. "It was amazing to meet this person in 2010 who looked like me and who had all these similar traits to me," he says. "It explained a lot about where I came from and was a very healing process. But ultimately I wanted to find a man who wanted to be my father, and he met me more out of curiosity..."   
Feast believes that we should be providing not just the register, but professional support to people like Tom, just as we do with adopted people who decide they need help or to look for their roots. She would also like to see the UK learning from countries such as Australia, where far more questions are asked at policy and practice level about whether donor conception is emotionally healthy for the family and whether children are at the heart of decision-making. "Then there's the role of clinics," she says.   
Olivia Montuschi of the UK's Donor Conception Network, which represents families with donor-conceived children, claims most clinics already offer at least one so-called "implications counselling" session. "But I agree that's not sufficient," says Montuschi, who herself has two grown-up children thanks to sperm donation. "Many people need to grieve the child they imagined they would have, and clinics should be recognising that and supporting them with that process, then promoting the importance of being open and honest so that would-be parents are ready to answer what can be some very difficult questions from their children."   
Donor-conceived people can fare well in families, she says, but studies show that those who grow up with parents who are confident, comfortable, honest and open at what they've done fare much better.   
Witjens agrees that there's a long way to go. "I know some clinics don't offer any support or counselling. Just yesterday, a professional from a clinic asked me why it even matters if parents tell their children at all."   
Copyright (c) 2015 PQ - Independent (London UK)

Hilpern, Kate. "Who's the Daddy?" The Independent, 14 Sep 2015, pp. 33. SIRS Issues Researcher, https://0-explore-proquest-com.archway.searchmobius.org/sirsissuesresearcher/document/2265878521?accountid=67764.


	8. Retorical Essay Assistance

Rhetorical Analysis Pre-writing Homework  
Name:   
Think of this pre-writing assignment as a template for your final draft. Answering the following questions will help you clarify your thoughts and organize your information. Please type your responses in this document, save it, and upload it in MyMAC. 

What is the Works Cited citation for the article you’re analyzing?

 

Introduction:  
Opening Hook:

 

Summarize the article (make sure you clearly articulate the author’s argument and that you provide an in-text citation):

 

Thesis:

 

Rhetorical Situation:   
Who is the author? What do you know about him/her? 

 

What motivated the author to write this article?

 

What publication did the article come from? What do you know about it?

 

Who is the intended audience? How do you know?

Rhetorical Analysis:  
How does the author establish ethos (or not)?

 

How does the author use logos?

 

How does the author use pathos?

 

Is the writing style formal, informal, satirical, or something else? How is it suited to the audience and occasion? 

 

Conclusion:  
Explain how well the author established his/her argument. End with an interesting closing line.


	9. Def Essay Research

Thesis  
1\. State your thesis in the following template: __________ is (or is not) a __________because it has (or does not have) features A, B, and C (or more).  
A: Marriage is ownership because you are legally bound to this person (sharing their credit, their debts, financial), if you get divorced, you could lose all of your possessions and creatures (As they are defined as possessions and items by the law), and you are literally “given” away at the ceremony. (Can also use dourys, loss of last name to husband, divorce is a stigma against women, etc)  
2\. Who would disagree with your definition?  
B: Old fashioned people, the older generation, religious people  
3\. Why are you interested in this topic?  
C: I am considering marriage for my future, however the way the world is now and how I am, I do not know if I am actually "marriage" material, or at least, not this type of marriage.  
4\. Remember you need at least three sources in your paper. Where/how do you think you would use source material in this essay?  
D: Debate sites, Opposing View Points, JSTOR, Statistics  
*************************************************************************************************************  
The freedom to choose to marry (Article Peer Reviewed)  
Marriage responds to the universal fear that a lonely person might call out only to find no one there. It offers the hope of companionship and understanding and assurance that while both still live there will be someone to care for the other.  
\--Obergefell v. Hodges (1)  
Marriage is the batterer's gateway to establishing power over the family finances and property.  
\--Dana Harrington Conner (2)  
INTRODUCTION  
Over the last several decades, the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Trans (LGBT) (3) community made the political decision to push for "marriage equality" and the "freedom to marry," rather than "same-sex" marriage or "homosexual" marriage. (4) Like the decision that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg made in the 1970s, to refer to "gender-based" equality rather than "sex-based" equality, this change in terminology tried to focus society on the concept of "equality" rather than "sex" (5) and the category of "marriage" rather than "homosexual marriage." (6) Although this change in terminology cannot, alone, account for changes in public opinion, it does coincide with increasing public acceptance of individuals having the freedom to marry the person they love without regard to sex or sexual orientation. (7)  
Thus, when the Supreme Court announced its decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, (8) the leading LGBT rights organizations applauded a victory for "marriage equality" (9) or the "freedom to marry." (10) Partially reflecting this change in terminology, the Obergefell Court described the victory as one for "same-sex marriage," (11) the "freedom to marry," (12) and the "right to marry," (13) although it never mentioned the term "marriage equality."  
But what is "marriage equality" and the "freedom to marry"? How does Obergefell relate to those two constitutional protections? This Article argues that the Obergefell decision reflects an important advance for some aspects of marriage equality and the freedom to marry, (14) while also insufficiently developing the freedom to choose to marry. Nonetheless, the roots of the freedom to choose to marry can be found in the precedent underlying Obergefell as well as in some aspects of the decision itself.  
"Marriage equality" should be understood to have three interrelated aspects. (15) First, the two members of the couple (16) should be entitled to have a relationship of equality rather than one of domination and submission. (17) As Justice Ginsburg mentioned during the oral argument in Obergefell, the elimination of laws like Louisiana's "Head and Master" rule (18) helped to change marriage so that it would no longer be a state-mandated "relationship of a dominant male to a subordinate female." (19) Second, marital and nonmarital couples should be treated with equal dignity and respect so that access to important societal benefits and privileges, such as adoption or contraception, are not dependent on a couple's marital status. (20) Third, individuals should be able to enter into marriage on a nondiscriminatory basis, as reflected in the Supreme Court's historic decision to overturn anti- miscegenation statutes. (21) The courts have also referred to this third aspect of marriage equality as the "freedom to marry" (22) or the "right to marry," (23) emphasizing that characteristics like the race of one's partner should not serve to exclude one from the institution. While the Obergefell decision undoubtedly furthers the third aspect of marriage equality, by allowing couples to enter the institution without regard to their sex or sexual orientation, (24) it does not sufficiently recognize and protect the first two aspects of marriage equality. Without all three aspects of marriage equality, this Article argues that individuals will not have the freedom to choose to marry.  
By tracing the development of the freedom to marry (or what the Obergefell Court interchangeably describes as the "right to marry" (25)), Part I of this Article argues that the freedom to marry should be understood to include the freedom to choose not to get married, (26) just as the freedom to choose to use contraceptives (27) or have an abortion (28) also includes the freedom to choose not to get sterilized, (29) not to have a compulsory caesarean section, (30) as well as to go to term with one's pregnancy. (31)  
Part II relates the first aspect of marriage equality--the elimination of the subordinate treatment of women within marriage--to the Obergefell decision. Despite the elimination of coverture, this Article argues that marriages between a man and a woman (32) often continue to retain the traditional elements of a relationship between "a dominant male" and "subordinate female." (33) The Obergefell Court's idealistic assertion that marriage offers the "hope of companionship and understanding" (34) ignores the evidence that women, within marriage, are disproportionately the individuals who provide care to others while also disproportionately facing the threat of violence in their intimate lives. (35) This Article argues that the Obergefell decision is neither the result of, nor likely to lead to, improvement in the first aspect of marriage equality unless the Court recognizes the importance of women having a more genuine choice whether to enter (or leave) this institution. (36)  
Part III relates the second aspect of marriage equality--the equal treatment of marital and nonmarital relationships--to the Obergefell decision. The Obergefell Court's emphasis on the importance of children being raised by married parents reflects the historical stigma against nonmarital parents and their children. The Court's decision might contribute to that stigma by facilitating states' refusals to allow unmarried couples to adopt children. (37) Further, the Court's emphasis on the financial benefits that are accorded marital couples, in contrast to those offered nonmarital couples, reflects the historical discrimination against nonmarital couples. The Court's opinion might facilitate the deepening of that disparity by emboldening entities to eliminate the few benefits they currently offer nonmarital couples. (38) In order to further the second aspect of marriage equality, the Court needs to question why certain rights and privileges, such as adoption and financial benefits, are limited to nonmarital couples, and avoid a simplistically idealistic portrayal of marriage under which government is allowed to reflexively limit those benefits to marital couples.  
Part IV concludes by suggesting that we could better attain genuine marriage equality by insisting that the freedom to choose to marry requires the state to develop a more neutral legal stance towards the institution of marriage. Such a stance might improve the institution of marriage itself, by encouraging people to enter it for love and companionship rather than instrumental benefits, while also respecting the freedom of individuals to share love and companionship without entering the institution of marriage. By exploring sociological evidence from one country that has developed a more neutral stance towards marriage, this Article suggests that such an approach is both attainable and beneficial. The freedom to choose to marry is a possibility under conditions of genuine marriage equality.  
I. From the Freedom to Marry to the Freedom to Choose to Marry  
How do we can truly achieve genuine marriage equality and the freedom to choose to marry? One step forward is to build on the Obergefell Court's observation that the freedom to marry is both an equality interest and a liberty interest--one that we can genuinely choose whether to accept. Close examination of some of the liberty and equality case law underlying the Obergefell opinion can provide us with the foundation to build a genuine freedom to choose to marry.  
A. Pierce v. Society of the Sisters: The Freedom to Choose Education  
The foundational, liberty case law is based on a freedom to choose to engage in various protected activities, as reflected in the 1925 decision in Pierce v. Society of the Sisters, (39) which was discussed in the Obergefell opinion. (40) Oregon's 1922 state initiative to amend the state's Compulsory Education Act required parents to send their children to a public school, thereby precluding them from attending plaintiff's parochial school. (41) The plaintiffs argued that the statute "conflicts with the right of parents to choose schools where their children will receive appropriate mental and religious training." (42) The Supreme Court accepted this argument, finding that the "fundamental theory of liberty" prevents the "general power of the state to standardize its children by forcing them to accept instruction from public teachers only." (43) The Supreme Court affirmed the injunction against enforcement of the statute that had been entered by the lower courts. (44) As a result of this injunction, no one would be forced to send his or her child to a nonpublic school but the option of such education was retained by the Court's liberty-based decision. Thus, properly understood, Pierce protected the freedom of parents to choose a private or public school for their children's education.  
B. Griswold v. Connecticut: The Freedom to Choose Contraceptives  
In overturning a state statute that precluded married couples from using contraceptives, the Supreme Court built on the Pierce decision in 1965 in Griswold v. Connecticut, (45) The Griswold Court described Pierce as standing for the proposition that "the right to educate one's children as one chooses is made applicable to the State by the force of the First and Fourteenth Amendments." (46) It found that Connecticut law interfered with the "zone of privacy" and had "a maximum destructive impact upon [the marital] relationship." (47) Unfortunately, the Court did not explain how the law achieved this "maximum destructive impact" but one might surmise that the Court believed the law impinged on a married couple's decisions whether or not to seek to have children and whether or not to engage in nonprocreative sexual intercourse. The Court's decision protected the right to choose not to procreate as well as the right to retain the ability to procreate. (48) The Obergefell Court cited Griswold for the proposition that the Constitution protects "certain personal choices central to individual dignity and autonomy," (49) recognizing the foundational element of "choice" in that decision.  
C. Loving v. Virginia: The Freedom to Choose to Marry  
Then, in 1967, the landmark decision in Loving v. Virginia (50) invalidated anti-miscegenation laws and recognized the "freedom of choice to marry." This case received considerable attention from the Obergefell Court as the basis of the freedom to marry. (51)  
The story underlying this case reflects the limited choices available to a mixed-race couple. Mildred and Richard Loving were married in Washington, D.C. on June 2, 1958, but their families were from Central Point, Virginia. (52) After getting married in D.C., they returned to Virginia to live with Mildred's parents where, five weeks later, they were arrested by the county sheriff and two deputies for violating Virginia's Racial Purity Law. (53) They got married in D.C. because Richard, who was white, realized that Virginia law would not allow the couple to marry in Virginia due to the fact that Mildred was part- Cherokee and part-black. (54) Virginia law also precluded them from residing in Virginia after they married. The state law "stipulated that all marriages between a white person and a colored person shall be absolutely void without any decree of divorce or other legal process, and it prohibited interracial couples from circumventing the law by having their marriages validated elsewhere and later return to Virginia." (55) The penalty, as they soon learned, when they were arrested by three law enforcement officers early one morning in Virginia, (56) was a year in jail if they ever returned to Virginia. They only avoided that penalty by agreeing to move to Washington, D.C., pay a court fine, and not "return together or at the same time for a period of twenty-five years." (57)  
In convicting them of violating the state Racial Purity statute, the state court judge made clear his animosity to their relationship and marriage: "Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix." (58) When the Lovings sought to have the judge vacate their conviction in 1963 so they could return to Virginia, he refused. (59) That refusal was the legal basis of their Supreme Court case.  
Their case parallels Obergefell (60) in that Virginia's marriage law precluded recognition of mixed-race marriages irrespective of whether the couple married out of state and returned to Virginia, or sought to get married in Virginia. While the modern bans against same-sex marriages did not create criminal penalties for same-sex couples who sought to marry, they achieved the parallel result of failing to recognize the validity of marriages even if they had been performed out of state.  
Loving also has parallels to the decision overturning state sodomy statutes in Lawrence v. Texas. (61) The plaintiffs in Lawrence faced criminal penalties for engaging in sexual activity. The plaintiffs in Loving faced criminal penalties for getting married.  
But the parallel between Loving and Lawrence also breaks down when one considers the tapestry of laws criminalizing sexual activity between mixed-race couples. Whereas sodomy laws typically targeted all sexual activities between two people of the same sex, (62) laws criminalizing mixed-race sexual activity were often more selective. Referring to the lawfulness of white men having sex with black female slaves, one commentator noted: "After all, it was cheaper to breed slaves than to import them." (63) The criminal law statutes prohibiting fornication and adultery were typically only enforced to prevent mixed-race sexual activity when the woman was white. (64) "[S]exual exploitation of black women was maintained and promoted by the system of segregation, including prohibitions against interracial marriage." (65) A white man could have free rein over a black woman's sexuality but not be expected to marry her. In fact, the anti-miscegenation laws precluded him from marrying her.  
Thus, in context, what did the Loving Court mean when it referred to the "freedom to choose to marry"? The Loving Court says: "The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discriminations. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State." (66) The Court is referring to the choice of the race of one's partner rather than the choice of whether to get married. The state of Virginia had not sought to prevent a white man from having sexual relations with a black woman, but it did not want him to marry her.  
Hence, Loving contains the "freedom to choose" formulation proposed by this Article but does not do so in a context that emphasizes that two people might choose not to marry but still want the full respect and recognition offered to marital relationships. In the race context, that would have been an odd formulation because one might argue that black women could only hope for societal respect if their white partner was willing to marry them. An unmarried relationship between a black woman and white man was nothing new or remarkable; it was the expected relationship. It would have been no victory for the racial civil rights movement for the Loving Court to emphasize the freedom of a white man not to marry a black, female, sexual partner. The choice that was absent was only in one direction--the desire of a white man and black woman to marry each other.  
Loving, therefore, plants the seeds of "choice" in thinking about marriage but does not contemplate that choice as including the freedom not to marry. Further development of the concept of liberty is needed for the Court to also develop the freedom to refrain from a decision to marry. (67)  
D. Roe v. Wade: The Freedom to Choose to Terminate a Pregnancy  
The grounding of the Court's liberty decisions in the freedom to choose is clearer in Roe v. Wade. (68) By making abortion illegal, the plaintiff argued that the state of Texas had "improperly invade[d] a right, said to be possessed by the pregnant woman, to choose to terminate her pregnancy." (69) The Supreme Court largely accepted that argument, finding that the right of privacy, as based on the concept of liberty found in the Fourteenth Amendment, "is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy." (70) While the Court would certainly recognize the desire of many women to choose to give birth, it also recognized "the distress, for all concerned, associated with the unwanted child, and there is the problem of bringing a child into a family already unable, psychologically and otherwise, to care for it." (71) Thus, the Court's decision is understood to protect the freedom to choose to terminate one's pregnancy.  
A discussion of Roe v. Wade is absent from the Court's decision in Obergefell, probably because of the controversial nature of that opinion. (72) Nonetheless, that case is clearly an important component of the development of the Court's liberty doctrine, particularly with respect to the concept of "choice."  
E. Planned Parenthood v. Casey: The Freedom to Choose to Terminate a Pregnancy  
About a decade before the Court extended some liberty rights to gay men and lesbians, the Court reaffirmed that the liberty interest protected by the Fourteenth Amendment included the freedom of a woman to choose to terminate her pregnancy in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. (73) In reaffirming this liberty interest, the plurality opinion, which was joined by Justice Kennedy (the author of Obergefell) was careful to recognize the reasonable bases upon which people might make different choices regarding the abortion decision:  
One view is based on such reverence for the wonder of creation that  
any pregnancy ought to be welcomed and carried to full term no  
matter how difficult it will be to provide for the child and ensure  
its well-being. Another is that the inability to provide for the  
nurture and care of the infant is a cruelty to the child and an  
anguish to the parent. (74)

In recognizing a woman's freedom to choose to terminate her pregnancy, the Court, however, did not insist that the state take a position of complete neutrality with respect to the woman's decision. "Though the woman has a right to choose to terminate or continue her pregnancy before viability, it does not at all follow that the State is prohibited from taking steps to ensure that this choice is thoughtful and informed." (75) The Court selected the amorphous "undue burden" (76) standard to determine if a state regulation interfered with the woman's constitutional freedom to choose to terminate or continue her pregnancy before viability. Thus, Casey protected a woman's freedom to choose whether or not to terminate her pregnancy while also allowing a state, if it desired, to enact regulations that would impose some restrictions on a woman's ability to procure an abortion. Whether those restrictions were "undue" was determined by assessing whether the "state regulation has the purpose or effect of placing a substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking an abortion of a nonviable fetus." (77) In Casey, the Court upheld certain restrictions and overturned others, based on the application of the undue burden standard, making it clear that the state did not have to take a perfectly neutral stance with respect to the woman's abortion decision. Because the Court recognized the right of the state to impose some restrictions on the abortion decision, it would be wrong to describe the Court's opinion as "pro-abortion." Instead, it was "pro-choice."  
As the Court turned to the application of this line of cases to the rights of gay men and lesbians to engage in sexual intimacy, and, ultimately, to choose to get married, the Court never repeated this "undue burden" legal standard (or even cited Casey). It therefore leaves open the question whether the undue burden standard is unique to the abortion arena. In other areas in which the Court has found a "liberty" interest, is the state allowed to try to interfere with the individual's exercise of that liberty interest by expressing a policy preference for the individual choosing, or not choosing, to exercise that liberty interest? Is abortion different because of the state's recognized interest in protecting potential life? As discussed below, in Parts I (F)-(H), the answer to that question should be "yes," because the freedom to choose to express sexual intimacy and the freedom to choose to marry pose few strong countervailing state interests that justify the state tipping its hand in a particular direction.  
F. Lawrence v. Texas: The Freedom to Choose Sexual Intimacy  
After hinting in 1996 in Romer v. Evans that the Court was prepared to broadly protect gay men and lesbians from state regulations that seem "inexplicable by anything but animus toward the class it affects," (78) the Court in Lawrence v. Texas, (79) in an opinion authored by Justice Kennedy, overturned a Texas sodomy statute that was only enforced against same-sex participants. As it has in many of its gay rights decisions, the Court connected equal protection and liberty principles: "Equality of treatment and the due process right to demand respect for conduct protected by the substantive guarantee of liberty are linked in important respects, and a decision on the latter point advances both interests." (80) The Lawrence decision was an important basis of the Court's decision in Obergefell. (81)  
Unlike the Casey decision, Lawrence fails to identify the legal rule that governs its decision. May the state limit individuals' liberty interests in private sexual intimacy in any way? What kinds of arguments, if any, can be used to limit the freedom of couples to engage in sexual intimacy?  
There are two passages in Lawrence that hint at the answer to that question but do not resolve it. First, the Court tells us what the case does not involve, suggesting that a state might regulate an individual's liberty interest in sexual intimacy if one of these factors were involved:  
The present case does not involve minors. It does not involve  
persons who might be injured or coerced or who are situated in  
relationships where consent might not easily be refused. It does  
not involve public conduct or prostitution. It does not involve  
whether the government must give formal recognition to any  
relationship that homosexual persons seek to enter. (82)

One could interpret that passage to mean that a state might restrict (or even ban) sexual relations with minors, nonconsensual sexual relations, public sexual expression, prostitution, or legal recognition of same-sex relationships. Yet, the Lawrence decision does not make clear how significantly that restriction might be imposed. Can a state, for example, criminalize all sexual conduct involving individuals under the age of eighteen? Without a legal framework, it is impossible to resolve that question. But the post-Lawrence case law also makes it clear that the Court did not mean that states might restrict or ban everything on that list. We now know that a state must recognize marriage between two individuals of the same sex. With hindsight, therefore, that passage tells us very little about the Court's framework. It may simply tell us what the case is not about--leaving to another day the resolution of cases fitting those fact patterns.  
Second, the Court tells us what rights the plaintiffs are entitled to invoke. "Their right to liberty under the Due Process Clause gives them the full right to engage in their conduct without intervention of the government." (83) Citing Casey, the Court then says: "It is a promise of the Constitution that there is a realm of personal liberty which the government may not enter." (84) Presumably, so long as they have consent and have not engaged in coercion or injury, adults get to decide on the parameters of their sexual intimacy. Building on the abortion case law, individuals have the freedom to choose with whom and how to engage in sexual intimacy. It is unthinkable that the state would insist that two people engage in intimate sexual behavior, just as it is impermissible for a state to criminalize "two adults who, with full and mutual consent from each other, engaged in sexual practices common to a homosexual lifestyle." (85) One might say that Lawrence protects the freedom to choose to be celibate as fully as it protects the freedom to choose to be sexually intimate.  
G. United States v. Windsor: The Right to the Exclusive Benefits of Marriage  
Justice Kennedy's opinion for the Court in United States v. Windsor, (86) which invalidated Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), was a huge victory for the third aspect of marriage equality. It made it possible for married, same-sex couples to access the full set of benefits accorded to marital couples by the federal government. Windsor is cited extensively in Obergefell, (87) Nonetheless, the Windsor Court's reflexive assumption that the state should be able to limit valuable tax benefits to marital couples fails to sufficiently further the freedom to choose to get married. Although Edith Windsor and Thea Spyer held a commitment ceremony decades ago, during which they exchanged a circular diamond brooch and made a long-term commitment to each other, Windsor's constitutional entitlement to the tax benefits of a long-term relationship was contingent on their legally-recognized marital status. (88) The Court held that she was entitled to obtain a tax refund for the $363,053 she had paid in federal estate taxes, because she and Spyer were legally married in Canada in 2007, not because they had a commitment ceremony many decades earlier. (89)  
While furthering the third aspect of marriage equality, the Windsor decision undermined the second aspect of marriage equality--the equal treatment of marital and nonmarital couples. Spyer and Windsor were fortunate to have the resources to travel to Canada to get married, at a time when New York was not granting same-sex marriages. After New York recognized their marriage, Windsor was also able to attain the services of a lawyer to ask for a refund of the estate taxes she had paid to the federal government. But for the trip to Canada, she would not have been allowed to ask that her relationship be treated with the "dignity" (90) of heterosexual marriages. In other words, no one asked why a relationship is only entitled to a $363,053 tax benefit if the two members of that relationship are married. States and the federal government are unquestionably allowed to "give this class of persons ... a dignity and status of immense import." (91) But should these benefits be limited to those who are legally married? Because Spyer and Windsor were legally married, this issue did not directly arise in Windsor.  
Under the third aspect of marriage equality, the Court's decision in Windsor is correct. If opposite-sex couples are allowed to get married and receive a massive tax benefit, then same-sex couples should have the same opportunity. But if the freedom to marry is truly a liberty interest, grounded in the freedom to choose, then similarly situated, unmarried partners should also be able to request such a tax benefit--or adopt and raise a child with the same ease as married partners--under the second aspect of marriage equality. By limiting that benefit to those who are married, the state is placing a heavy hand on the scale in favor of marriage. It is being far from neutral. Recognition of the second aspect of marriage equality would, at least, give litigants who represent unmarried couples the opportunity to ask the state to justify this stark difference in treatment between marital and nonmarital couples.  
A response to this observation is that the abortion case law allows the state to take a non-neutral stance towards abortion. The state is allowed to regulate abortion to further interests such as the protection of fetal life so long as its regulation does not pose an undue burden on the woman seeking an abortion. The Court's case law on what constitutes an undue burden is murky but, at least, we have a legal standard. And, in the abortion area, we have a clearly articulated state interest--the protection of potential life.  
In the marriage context, however, there has been no clear articulation of why the state needs to take a pro-marriage stance. One might argue that married people have higher rates of happiness, but that happiness could be, in part, due to the benefits that society accords to those who are married. One might argue that it is better for children to be "legitimated" by having married parents but that argument merely allows one form of prejudice (illegitimacy) to support another form of prejudice (unmarried status). One might argue that married couples tend to have longer and more stable relationships than unmarried couples. Even if that is true (and those married relationships are healthy ones that should be maintained), that does not answer the question of why the government needs to financially support those relationships. People could still have religious marriages or private nonreligious commitment ceremonies, even if the state did not recognize marriage. Those ceremonies might "cement" relationships in a way that would be supportive of their long-term nature.  
Equally importantly, we should remember that not all relationships that may be recognized through state-sanctioned marriage should endure. Marriage does not shield women from abuse and violence. (92) Marriage may also make it harder for women to leave abusive relationships. As will be discussed in Part II, women tend to sacrifice some of their wage-earning power during marriage, especially if they have children. (93) Their financial precariousness can make it difficult for them to leave abusive relationships, let alone ones that are merely unpleasant. It was not until fairly recent times that a woman could allege that she was raped while married. (94) "Marital rape" was considered an oxymoron. Although we have removed the legal barrier from claiming marital rape or seeking divorce, we have not removed all the social barriers. By allowing the state to financially privilege marriage, we may make it harder for women and men to "choose" to leave their marriage or not enter it in the first place.  
The determination that Section 3 of DOMA was unconstitutional was grounded in "the liberty protected by the Fifth Amendment's Due Process Clause [which] contains within it the prohibition against denying to any person the equal protection of the laws." (95) DOMA was found to be unconstitutional because it has the "purpose and effect to disparage and to injure those whom the State, by its marriage laws, sought to protect in personhood and dignity." (96) The federal government could offer "no legitimate purpose" to justify that injury. (97) The Court, however, did not consider whether Edith Windsor would have had a comparable injury had she and Spyer not traveled to Canada to have their relationship legally recognized. Their private ceremony in front of their friends, with an exchange of jewelry, would have still rendered their relationship invisible in the eyes of the state. The Court does not ask what "legitimate purpose" is served by treating couples so differently depending on whether they register their ceremony with the state as a marriage. To develop the freedom of choice to marry, that question should be raised in future cases.  
H. Obergefell v. Hodges: Towards the Freedom to Choose to Marry  
While most legal observers predicted that the Windsor decision would lead to the invalidation of all state bans on same-sex marriage, the Obergefell Court still had the responsibility to explain its rationale for that conclusion. A close examination of the justification offered by the Obergefell Court for that extension shows how a freedom to choose to marry can be found in that justification even if the freedom to choose is not emphasized by the Court's decision.  
The Obergefell Court mentions four principles that support extending state- recognized marriage to same-sex couples. This Part suggests how the Court's four principles could be refined and developed to support the freedom to choose to marry.  
1\. "The right to personal choice regarding marriage is inherent in the concept of individual autonomy." (98)  
The Court's articulation of this principle explicitly emphasizes the concept of "choice" yet the Court does not seem to understand what "choice" would truly mean in the marital context. It does not distinguish between a person deciding to get married in a private or religious setting and the state deciding to accord benefits to those who choose to marry. (99)  
This sloppiness or confusion does not exist in other areas where the Court recognizes liberty interests. For example, the Court readily distinguishes between a woman having the freedom to choose to have an abortion and the state being required to pay for that abortion under Medicaid. (100)  
When the Court refers to the "personal choice regarding marriage," it seems to be referring to the personal choice to enter a state-sanctioned institution of marriage. In the second half of the sentence articulating this first principle, the Court connects this "right to personal choice" to "individual autonomy." Because the "personal choice regarding marriage" is the personal choice to enter state-sanctioned marriage, the Court is directly connecting state recognition of marriage to individual autonomy. An emphasis on individual autonomy, in fact, could lead to a very different conclusion. "Autonomy" evokes a libertarian perspective--that one should make a decision alone without state interference. The concept of individual autonomy, as applied to marriage, could mean that the state should take an entirely neutral stance with respect to marriage-- neither forbidding people from privately entering this institution nor according any legal benefits to those who do. It seems incongruous to say that the concept of individual autonomy requires the state to recognize the marital relationship.  
The Court's discussion of this principle emphasizes the concept of "choice" (101) without investigating what it means to have a genuine "choice." The Court says:  
"Like choices concerning contraception, family relationships, procreation, and childrearing, all of which are protected by the Constitution, decisions concerning marriage are among the most intimate that an individual can make." (102)  
"Choices about marriage shape an individual's destiny." (103) "There is a dignity in the bond between two men or two women who seek to marry and in their autonomy to make such profound choices." (104)  
In this last passage, in particular, the Court thinks of "choice" as only moving in one direction--to make the decision to marry. Its view is colored by the expectation that marriage constitutes the highest form of personal expression. "The nature of marriage is that, through its enduring bond, two persons together can find other freedoms, such as expression, intimacy, and spirituality. This is true for all persons, whatever their sexual orientation." (105) In that passage, the Court says "can" rather than "shall" but, nonetheless, seems to favor marriage over other kinds of personal relationships.  
Even though the Court may favor marriage over other forms of relationships, it ties the benefits of marriage to "expression, intimacy, and spirituality" rather than to state-rendered benefits such as tax exemptions and the like. Thus, one could read the Court as saying that couples must be allowed to enter this state-recognized institution if they feel it will further their expression, intimacy, or spirituality. But, of course, entering the institution for those highly personal reasons does not require the state to recognize the institution legally. Those observations could lead one to conclude that the state should not be allowed to ban private expressions of commitment through marriage but does not necessarily mean the state needs to privilege marital relationships over other kinds of relationships.  
2\. "The right to marry is fundamental because it supports a two-person union unlike any other in its importance to the committed individuals." (106)  
As with the first principle, the Court talks about the "right to marry" without considering why the state is allowed to privilege those who choose to marry. Drawing on its decision in Lawrence, the Court talks about the importance of individuals being able to enter into intimate conduct with another person as "one element in a personal bond that is more enduring." (107) The Court then takes the step to say that couples do not gain freedom by merely having the state no longer criminalize their intimate conduct. The Court posits that such couples, if not allowed to marry, would still be "outcast(s)." (108) "Outlaw to outcast may be a step forward, but it does not achieve the full promise of liberty." (109)  
The problem with this line of argument is that it is circular. The "support" is "unlike any other," in part, because the state chooses to offer substantial support to those who enter state-sanctioned marriage. The circularity of this argument is not apparent from the Court's opinion, because the Court does not reference state-sanctioned support in this part of its opinion. Instead, the Court speaks about the personal benefits that an individual might attain by being in a long-term, committed relationship. Without citation, the Court says: "Marriage responds to the universal fear that a lonely person might call out only to find no one there. It offers the hope of companionship and understanding and assurance that while both still live there will be someone to care for the other." (110) In those two sentences, one could substitute "long-term relationship" for "marriage" and draw the same conclusion.  
The larger difficulty implicit in the Court's discussion is that many people in society consider same-sex partners to be "outcasts" irrespective of whether those relationships are recognized by the state as marriages. Harkening back to Plessy v. Ferguson, (111) one could observe that the state's failure to recognize those relationships as marriages had a reinforcing effect on the thoughts or minds of the public. Before Obergefell, one could argue that we had state-sanctioned segregation--same-sex couples had to sit in the segregated railroad car of domestic partnership reinforcing prejudices against their relationships. Thus, Obergefell is the Brown v. Board of Education" (112) of the LGBT community because it refused to allow the state to maintain this mandated segregation.  
But, on close examination, the analogy falters. The concept of "marriage equality" is premised on the notion that one should be able to choose whether to get married. Similarly, in the education context, we say that parents may choose the education that their child receives, so long as parents make choices that are consistent with the child's constitutional right to receive an education. (113) Those who choose private or parochial education for their children are no longer considered "outcasts." (114) Parents who make such choices are thought to be exercising their freedom to choose their children's education. In fact, the freedom of parents to choose their children's education is part of the liberty case law that supports Obergefell. (115)  
Nonetheless, the Court is probably correct that those who choose to live in nonmarital relationships--be they opposite-sex or same-sex relationships--are likely stigmatized by society and treated adversely. In the Court's words, they have not received the "dignity" (116) accorded to others who enter marriage. The Court's solution to this lack of dignity problem is to allow same-sex couples to enter marriage rather than to ask what is the source of the "outcast" nature of nonmarital couples. The Court only refers to same-sex couples facing that outcast status but, surely, unmarried opposite-sex couples can also face such outcast status. That is why we have expressions like "living in sin." Based on the Supreme Court's decision in Lawrence, Virginia's statute banning fornication was found unconstitutional in 2005 (117) in a case involving sexual relations between a man and woman. The persistence of the Virginia fornication statute (until it was struck down as unconstitutional) suggests that the outcast status of nonmarital couples continues. The fact that opposite-sex couples have long had the freedom to marry does not seem to have ended the outcast status of those who choose not to marry. In fact, one might argue that their outcast status is heightened by the increased availability of marriage.  
One might therefore ask: how does one truly go from outcast to the achievement of full liberty? If opposite-sex couples are allowed to enter the state-sanctioned regime of marriage then it seems logical to allow same-sex couples to have the same opportunity. But to accord all partners the opportunity to choose how to create an enduring bond that is most appropriate for them, without facing an outcast status, then one must think about the meaning that is attached to the state-sanctioned relationship. In tipping the scales heavily in the favor of state-sanctioned marriage by according huge financial benefits to middle-class couples, the state may be contributing to this outcast status.  
3\. "(T]he right to marry ... safeguards children and families and thus draws meaning from related rights of childrearing, procreation, and education." (118)  
The Court's articulation of this third principle reflects how the Court's holding in Obergefell may harm some of the people it claims to want to assist, because, again, it cannot contemplate that some couples may want to choose to stay unmarried. This third principle purports to assist the children born to or adopted by nonmarital couples. The Court says: "Without the recognition, stability, and predictability marriage offers, their children suffer the stigma of knowing their families are somehow lesser." (119) They suffer this stigma even though the Court recognized that there is powerful evidence that "gays and lesbians can create loving, supportive families." (120) The Court tries to solve the stigma against "illegitimacy" by allowing the unmarried parents to get married. While all couples should certainly have the choice to get married, it seems troubling that one factor a couple must consider in making this choice is whether their children will be stigmatized because of the parents' nonmarital status. One must wonder if the stigma against nonmarital parents and their children (121) will increase as a new group is allowed to enter the institution of marriage, because couples can no longer offer as an excuse that the state would not permit them to marry.  
The Court does not even mention the heightened status of "illegitimate" children under the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause when it discusses this stigma. (122) The only counter-argument it contemplates is the concern that we should not insist that all married couples procreate. "In light of precedent protecting the right of a married couple not to procreate, it cannot be said the Court or the States have conditioned the right to marry on the capacity or commitment to procreate." (123) In other words, the Court was careful to note that the right to procreate also includes the right not to procreate. But it is not careful to consider that the freedom to marry should include the freedom not to marry, especially if we want to protect the well-being of children born or raised by nonmarital couples.  
4\. "[M]arriage is a keystone of our social order." (124)  
The articulation of this principle reflects the revered status that the Court applies to marriage. Under this principle, same-sex couples should have the opportunity to receive a long list of state-conferred benefits because we have always permitted the state to give marriage a privileged status in society. The court then compiles the long list of benefits at the state and federal level (125) with the glowing conclusion: "The States have contributed to the fundamental character of the marriage right by placing that institution at the center of so many facets of the legal and social order." (126) Because states and the federal government have created a privileged status for marital couples, then same-sex couples must be allowed to enter that privileged arena.  
The Court lists the material benefits of marriage alongside the more personal or spiritual aspects of marriage. It does not distinguish between the two, although the state has more impact on the material benefits than the personal or spiritual benefits. After the long list of material benefits, the Court says: "Same-sex couples, too, may aspire to the transcendent purposes of marriage and seek fulfillment in its highest meaning." (127) One could argue, however, that the state-sanctioned material benefits of marriage actually demean the institution itself by causing people to enter marriage for material benefits rather than to express their love for each other. The government, itself, is actually aware of this problem. Thus, we have statutes against "marriage fraud" when a United States citizen marries a foreign national for the sole purpose of assisting a foreign national gain United States immigration status. (128) Because of the significant material benefits connected to marriage, the government can sometimes find itself having to determine if a marriage is genuine or purely instrumental. One might say that the government, itself, has demeaned the institution of marriage by connecting it to so many material benefits.  
Long-term, stable relationships may be the keystone of our social order when the couples maintain those relationships out of personal satisfaction and happiness, and when they, sometimes, also choose to raise children together as part of that long-term commitment. The "social order" created by marriage, however, is not entirely beneficial, especially to some women who find themselves confined in traditional roles with few financial resources to leave those marriages. A more balanced examination of the meaning of state- sanctioned marriage in our society might help the Court to better understand its role in safeguarding the freedom to choose to marry.  
Thus, the Obergefell decision and its underlying precedents have fodder to develop a right to choose to marry. Emphasis on the right to choose marriage could, in turn, help develop the first and second aspects of marriage equality: (1) the equal treatment of women and men within marriage and (2) the equal treatment of marital and nonmarital couples. The next two Parts of this Article will discuss the continued existence of these two kinds of inequalities and suggest how a broader reading of Obergefell could help attain these aspects of equality.  
II. First Aspect of Marriage Equality: The Equal Treatment of Women and Men Within Marriage  
A. Coverture: Historical Roots  
The first aspect of marriage equality is the equal treatment of women and men within marriage through the elimination of the subordination of women to men within marriage. As reflected in Justice Ginsburg's statement from the bench during oral argument, the conventional story is that we have largely ended the subordination of women to men within marriage by eliminating coverture. (129) Coverture is a property-law concept that allowed a man to take control of a woman's property upon marriage. It symbolized the independence that women lost upon entering the institution of marriage, if they had access to property. (130) Under coverture, children were considered to be their fathers' assets; women could not seek custody of their children upon divorce. (131)  
Coverture was based on a gendered notion of women's subservient role to men in the household. "Under coverture, when a woman married, she surrendered her legal identity which was subsumed into her husband." (132) Coverture was symbolic of a man's control over a woman's body or "liberty" as well as her property. Nonetheless, the elimination of coverture did not cause male domination over women to end. Two historical examples can be helpful in understanding the consequences of the elimination of coverture for married women. The first story describes a woman who was married under coverture; the second story describes a woman who was married shortly after coverture ended.  
In 1858, the fifty-three year old Sarah Banks Sherwood married financially- challenged Jessup Sherwood. (133) When her husband started siphoning off her personal assets, she sought to require her husband to post a bond of the value of her estate, so that he could not drain all her assets. (134) Rather than accede to this demand, he allegedly "knocked her down on her bed," "appeared very angry," and perpetuated various abuses about which she "[did not] wish to say any more." (135) Her legal action was unsuccessful, and she was jailed for contempt and ordered to turn over her personal property to her husband. (136) Mrs. Sherwood's only legal recourse to avoid this depletion of her financial resources was the divorce court. Through the happenstance of intervention from P.T. Barnum, she was able to persuade the General Assembly to approve her petition for dissolution of her marriage. (137)  
The publicity from Mrs. Sherwood's situation may have led to elimination of coverture in Connecticut in 1877. (138) Thus, when Mrs. Mathewson, in 1906, found herself subject to coercive financial practices by her husband in Connecticut, which left her too destitute to take care of basic household needs, she was able to sue her husband "to pay her upon her demand a certain sum of money" (139) for her basic household needs. In a sympathetic decision, the Connecticut court explained that women no longer had to lose their legal identity or ability to own property upon marriage. (140) Thus, in contrast to Mrs. Sherwood, Mrs. Mathewson was able to secure funds from Mr. Mathewson during the course of her marriage due, in part, to the elimination of coverture.  
But these stories also reflect that the elimination of coverture did not bring equality to marriage. A woman, like Mrs. Mathewson, who has to go to court to get basic funds for subsistence from her husband is unlikely to be living in a household in which she is being treated with dignity and respect on a daily basis. The need for the lawsuit is a reflection of the male domination within her marriage and the limited options she had available to attain the most basic economic security. As we will see in Part II.B, Mrs. Mathewson's situation is, unfortunately, not one that we can assign to the history books as anachronistic because married women sometimes continue to find themselves in desperate situations that replicate the conditions of domination and subordination within coverture.  
B. Coverture: Modern Vestiges  
When the Obergefell Court mentions the abandonment of coverture, it asserts that this abandonment "worked deep transformations in [marriage's] structure, affecting aspects of marriage long viewed by many as essential.... These new insights have strengthened, not weakened, the institution of marriage." (141) While it is true that the elimination of coverture was an important step towards women's gender-based equality, the Obergefell Court is stuck in a highly romanticized view of marriage in which both partners to the marriage are able to cure their fears of loneliness (142) and "hope [for] companionship and understanding" (143) through this historic institution. This image is in stark contrast to the evidence that married women disproportionately bear the burden of caring for others, such as children, ill spouses, and elderly parents. (144) It is also in stark contrast to the fear of rape, battery, and even death, which women must disproportionately fear in any intimate relationship, including a marital relationship. (145) While the Obergefell decision may spur a marriage boom, as same-sex couples enter the institution, it is unlikely to be transformative to the women who are still living in a traditional marriage. (146)  
It is not clear what the Court means when it says that the elimination of coverture "strengthened" the institution of marriage. A smaller percentage of American adults are married today than when the United States Census Bureau first started collecting data on marriage rates in 1920. (147) What is "stronger" about the institution of marriage that has caused fewer people to select it? Although it is impossible to prove causation, one might argue that women are less likely to pursue marriage than in the past because they, on average, have greater economic security as the wage gap between women and men has shrunk somewhat. (148) Interestingly, the marriage rate peaked in 1960 at 72.2%, shortly before the passage of the Equal Pay Act in 1963 and has shrunk to 50.3% in 2013 as the wage gap between men and women has begun to shrink. (149) One might therefore argue that greater equality for women in society has, in fact, diminished the attractiveness of the institution of marriage, in that women now feel less compelled to enter marriage to attain greater economic security than in the past. Marriage, itself, however, may not necessarily be a more equitable institution for women even if women have gained more equality in society at large. Some women may have realized that they can better attain economic security, despite the elimination of coverture, without pursuing marriage. (150)  
While coverture has ended as a legal matter, modern vestiges of coverture can be seen in the social traditions that endure despite its elimination. (151) Women still typically relinquish basic aspects of their human identity like their last name (152) and the last names of their children (153) upon entering the institution of marriage. (154) These modern social conventions are the vestiges of the historical legal rules under coverture that mandated inequality. Although the law of child custody has changed to reflect the "best interest of the child" standard, (155) the social convention of giving the child the name of the father is a reflection of the historical principle that the child is the father's property. Further, women who are married and engaged in paid work outside the home continue to perform an extra three weeks of work at home per year as compared to their married male partners after the birth of a child. (156) "Parenthood remains an important barrier to a complete gender revolution." (157) The division of labor within the home continues to be gender-based and unequal.  
Writing in 2014, Professor Dana Harrington Conner has argued that "economic instability is a link that binds a woman to her abuser." (158) Women, who are disproportionately killed or battered by their husbands, (159) have been deprived of the "profound hopes and aspirations" within marriage. (160) Because marriage depresses women's labor force participation, it makes women more vulnerable to abusive situations that they cannot afford to leave. (161) "Marriage is the batterer's gateway to establishing power over the family finances and property." (162) Although coverture has formally ended, women's lack of economic resources to live independently from their husband is still a powerful force of inequality in women's lives. Women's economic precariousness may cause them to be willing to marry men to gain access to more financial resources and, once married, make it harder for them to leave those marriages, even if they are experiencing conditions of profound inequality. Further, as Professor Connor has observed, (163) these women's decisions, which are often socially pressured, to leave the paid workforce or accept reduced hours within the paid workforce after marriage, often leave them in precarious financial situations. If women had a more genuine choice to decide whether to marry, they might be able to avoid some of these financial detriments.  
When the Obergefell Court said that "the right to personal choice regarding marriage is inherent in the concept of individual autonomy," (164) it lost sight of the fact that women do not always have equal access to that individual autonomy within marriage. In Planned Parenthood v. Casey, (165) in an opinion joined by Justice Kennedy (who also authored Obergefell), the Supreme Court recognized that married women sometimes face both physical violence and psychological abuse. "Physical violence is only the most visible form of abuse. Psychological abuse, particularly forced social and economic isolation of women, is also common." (166) Rather than place marriage on a pedestal, the Casey Court safeguarded women's freedom to choose to terminate a pregnancy by overturning the provision that required them to notify their husbands. (167) While courts cannot be expected to be responsible for the elimination of gender-based inequality within marriage, they can seek to ensure that marriage is not placed on a legal and societal pedestal in a way that makes it difficult for women to not enter or choose to leave that institution. The Obergefell Court's romantic description of marriage is unnecessarily insensitive to the persistence of those gender-based norms and ignores foundational legal precedent that can unmask that romanticism. (168)  
III. Second Aspect of Marriage Equality: Equal Treatment of Marital and Nonmarital Couples  
The second aspect of marriage equality is the equal treatment of marital and nonmarital couples. This claim to equality may be especially controversial because existing statutes that proscribe "marital discrimination" have often not been interpreted to "forbid[] any preference for marital status." (169) As Professor Courtney Joslin has argued, protection against marital status discrimination is of the utmost importance because marital status discrimination disproportionately affects nonwhite and lower-income households, which have a lower rate of marriage than other groups. (170)  
Two pieces of evidence demonstrate the dramatic persistence of this aspect of marriage inequality: (1) the adverse treatment of the children of nonmarital couples as compared to the children of marital couples, and (2) the adverse financial treatment of nonmarital couples as compared to marital couples. The Obergefell Court was made aware of the continuing persistence of these forms of inequality but failed to take concrete steps to redress them.  
A. Nonmarital Couples and Their Children  
In 1968, the U.S. Supreme Court declared in Levy v. Louisiana (171) that it was unconstitutional for the state of Louisiana to treat the children of an unmarried woman less favorably than the children of a married woman in a wrongful death suit brought by her children. "Legitimacy or illegitimacy of birth has no relation to the nature of the wrong allegedly inflicted on the mother. These children, though illegitimate, were dependent on her; she cared for them and nurtured them; they were indeed hers in the biological and in the spiritual sense; in her death they suffered wrong in the sense that any dependent would." (172) The remedy for this discriminatory state statute was to allow the "illegitimate" children to recover damages. Since Levy, the courts have rendered a number of decisions to protect the rights of children born to unmarried parents, and many states have amended their laws to strengthen the inheritance rights of the children of unmarried parents. (173)  
Despite Levy and its progeny, children raised by unmarried, same-sex couples have often faced a lack of legal protection due to the unmarried status of their parents. (174) In many states, unmarried couples cannot both be the legally recognized parents of their children, when neither is the biological parent, (175) thereby depriving those children of valuable legal protection. The effect of these rules has been to preclude same-sex couples from jointly adopting children when the state forbade same-sex couples from marrying. Two different law reform strategies were available to solve this problem: (1) one could seek to change the state laws that require two adults to be married to each other in order to become the adoptive parents of the children they raise together, or (2) one could seek to change the state laws that forbid same-sex couples from marrying each other, so that same-sex partners could marry each other and then seek to adopt the children they raise together through existing adoption law. The marriage equality movement (176) has attempted to solve this problem of discrimination against the children of same-sex couples by embracing the second strategy. (177)  
The problem with the second strategy is that it conflates good parenting with the parents being married, thereby contributing to the stigma against nonmarital parents. This conflation can be seen in the way the Obergefell Court discusses the issue. The Obergefell Court recognizes the harms that flow to the children of unmarried parents--both material and attitudinal. The material harm flows, for example, from the inability of the nonparent to consent to medical treatment or attend parent-teacher conferences. (178) Other harms, however, flow from the stigma of illegitimacy. "Without the recognition, stability, and predictability marriage offers, their children suffer the stigma of knowing their families are somehow lesser." (179) By not allowing same-sex couples to marry, the "marriage laws at issue here thus harm and humiliate the children of same-sex couples." (180)  
Worried that those sentences have insulted married adults who choose not to have children (or are not able to do so), the Obergefell Court then says: "That is not to say the right to marry is less meaningful for those who do not or cannot have children." (181) But notice what the Court does not say. It does not say: "That is not to say that the ability to be a good parent is less possible or less likely for those who do not marry." One might conclude that parents who have chosen not to marry will find it all the more difficult to justify their decision now that the Court has recognized the "harm" and "humiliation" to the children of unmarried parents and suggested that the only way to cure that harm is for the parents to marry.  
The story of one of the plaintiffs reflects the Obergefell Court's conflation of marriage with good parenting. April DeBoer and Jayne Rowse were an unmarried same-sex couple residing in Hazel Park, Michigan. (182) As single people, DeBoer had adopted one child and Rowse had adopted two. (183) Under Michigan law, they could not jointly adopt those children unless they were married. (184) Similarly situated, unmarried opposite-sex adults would have faced the same problem--they would not have been allowed to jointly adopt the three children.  
In their original complaint, DeBoer and Rowse alleged that the state adoption law impermissibly discriminated against unmarried couples. The trial court, however, appeared to conclude that their injury really stemmed from their inability to many rather than the inability of all unmarried individuals to jointly adopt. (185) The trial court invited the plaintiffs to amend their complaint to allege that the state marriage law was unconstitutional, thereby precluding them from adopting. (186) Their case then proceeded through the courts as a freedom-to-marry case rather than as a right-to-adopt case. After the United States Supreme Court ruled in their favor, they reportedly said: "Now apparently we have to plan a marriage." (187) They did not say: "Now apparently we have to file for an adoption" because their right to adopt is still contingent on their willingness to marry. Hopefully, they genuinely wanted to get married because their right-to-adopt case was transformed into a freedom-to-marry case. Michigan law still only allows a second-parent adoption if a couple is married. Because the plaintiffs began their lawsuit seeking the right to adopt, as an unmarried couple, rather than the freedom to marry, the Obergefell Court could have offered some dicta that their right to be legally recognized as parents should not have been conditioned on their marital status. That language could have advanced marriage equality.  
An argument in favor of conditioning adoption on marriage is that parents are more likely to stay together if they are married. In other countries, however, adults manage to stay in long-term relationships to raise children together without formally joining the institution of marriage. (188) In Sweden, for example, couples typically stay in long-term stable relationships and raise children together without being married. "Thus, a child born to unmarried Swedish parents who cohabit--as the overwhelming majority of unmarried parents in Sweden do--may face less risk of family disruption than a child born to the average married couple here in the United States." (189) In other words, couples can choose to stay together to raise children on a long-term basis without state-sponsored inducements to marry. Despite state-sponsored financial inducements to marry, which will be discussed in Part III.B, the United States has the highest divorce rate in the world. (190) An exclusive emphasis on marriage as a way to get couples to stay together does not seem to have worked in the United States; expanding the kinds of couples who receive support when they choose to raise children together may be a better state policy to promote our interest in the well-being of children irrespective of the marital status of their parents.  
B. Financial Benefits from Marriage  
Another important aspect of marriage equality is the equal financial treatment of marital couples compared with nonmarital couples. The Obergefell decision does not further this aspect of marriage equality, (191) even though the Court expressed the view that people marry for "expression, intimacy and spirituality" (192) rather than financial benefits. If the Court really wanted to encourage people to marry out of love, rather than for the financial benefits, then it could have suggested that we make the state justify the myriad of financial benefits that are accorded exclusively to married couples.  
The tax benefits of marriage are especially strong for those couples that reflect a traditional marriage by having one high-income and one low-income partner. For example, if one partner earns $90,000 and one partner earns $25,000 per year, the married couple would have a tax savings of $1,256.50 as compared to what they would have paid individually in taxes if not married. (193) By contrast, there may be an income- tax marriage penalty if they each earn about the same amount of money, and jointly earn more than $ 169,150. (194) This aspect of the so-called "marriage penalty" is actually a marriage equality penalty for high-income taxpayers.  
The benefits of marriage are important when it is time to retire, especially if the couple has experienced a traditional marriage. When claiming Social Security benefits, the spouse with lower lifetime earnings can claim benefits based on the other spouse's earnings record. If the higher-earning spouse is the first to die, the lower-earning spouse can receive the higher-earning spouse's benefit as a survivor benefit. (195) Further, when a surviving spouse inherits an IRA, she or he can delay drawing down the account until she or reaches the age of seventy and a half. (196) If anyone else would inherit the IRA, they would have to draw it down based on when the deceased individual reached the age of seventy and a half. (197) These retirement benefits "can make the difference between running out of money in retirement and being financially secure." (198)  
Some researchers have tried to price the "cost" of being unmarried in the United States. In 2009, Tara Siegel Bernard and Rob Lieber calculated the cost of being an unmarried gay couple with respect to various benefits. The health insurance cost ranged from $28,595 to $211,993; the estate tax expense was estimated to be $43,378; the pension cost was estimated to be $32,253; and the spousal IRA cost was estimated to be $112,192. (199)  
The marriage rate among poor couples is closer to that of the marriage rates around the world, arguably because poorer couples do not benefit from most of these rules. (200) In fact, although not frequently discussed, there is a marriage penalty for some poor couples in our society. "Getting married might, say, reduce eligibility for Medicaid benefits, the earned-income tax credit or the tax credit that can help pay for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act." (201) Because middle-class people disproportionately benefit from getting married, it is often said that marriage leads to stronger financial circumstances. But that is only true if one or both members of the partnership have significant financial resources to bring to the marriage.  
Marriage equality proponents have often supported, rather than sought to undermine, this aspect of marriage inequality by encouraging more couples to be able to enter the institution of marriage without first asking why those benefits are limited to married couples in the first place. (202) With the availability of marriage to a larger segment of society, entities that currently allow unmarried couples to seek benefits may decide to end those programs, (203) thereby exacerbating marital discrimination. Same-sex couples, who previously could not choose to marry but were nonetheless able to obtain domestic partnership benefits, will have to decide if they can afford not to marry. (204) Opposite-sex couples, who had made a conscious choice not to marry, will now have to confront whether they can continue to afford that decision. These financial inducements may increase the marriage rate--but for what benefit? Although the marriage rate in the United States has been declining, it is still among the highest in the western world. (205)  
An argument in favor of the state's favorable treatment of marital couples is that people who marry report higher levels of happiness or satisfaction than people who are unmarried. (206) This argument has many flaws. First, it fails to take into account how marriage rates correlate with socio-economic status. Although it is not clear that what we call "happiness" increases with socio-economic status, studies indicate that "global evaluations of life" do tend to rise as people have access to more economic resources. (207) Poor people, who are disproportionately less likely to marry, (208) report higher levels of "sadness" but it is hard to say that that is because they are unmarried or simply because they are poor. (209)  
Second, this argument fails to consider whether that correlation would continue to be true if, due to societal or legal changes, even more people got married and possibly rushed into marriage before knowing each other well. Factors associated with a higher risk of divorce include marrying at a young age, possessing less education, and having less income. (210) These factors are interconnected--people who marry at a younger age are less likely to have finished their education and less likely to have started to earn a decent income than those who get married later in life. To the extent that government incentivizes people to marry for economic reasons, it is incentivizing them to marry at a younger age before they have the kind of economic stability that is likely to help sustain their marriage.  
Third, this argument fails to take into account the financial hardship that is disproportionately visited upon women who are married and then divorce. To the extent that the tax code incentivizes couples to mimic a traditional male/female relationship by having the lower-earning individual (typically the woman) stay home from paid work to raise the children, it is also makes it harder for a woman to be able to afford to leave an unhappy marriage since she has foregone some of her earning power during marriage. A divorced woman is likely to suffer financially, in part, because of the decline in her income resulting from divorce. This is especially true if she reduced her earnings to facilitate raising children during the marriage. (211) Whereas marriage tends to depress women's earning capacity, it has the opposite effect on men. On average, married men (who often have children) earn ten to fifteen percent more than unmarried men. (212) Thus, a woman may not be able to afford to leave an unhappy marriage, (213) and a man often has strong incentives to stay married to maintain his higher earning capacity.  
Fourth, reference to the benefits of marriage ignores the data on spousal abuse (usually directed at the wife) within marriage. (214) "[Research shows that wife assault is more common in families where power is concentrated in the hands of the husband or male partner and the husband makes most of the decisions regarding family finances and strictly controls when and where his wife or female partner goes." (215) Thus, women's well-being directly correlates with equality within the relationship itself. When considering whether women benefit from being married, one might want to know if the intimate relationship is based on principles of equality. That factor seems to be pre-eminent in determining if a relationship leads to greater well-being in a woman's life, not whether the relationship is consummated in "marriage."  
The Obergefell opinion extends the financial benefits of marriage to same-sex couples without asking whether those myriad of benefits to marital couples really benefit this institution which the Court holds on a pedestal. The Obergefell Court was sensitive to the outcast status of gay men and lesbians in our society. (216) In tipping the scales heavily in the favor of state-sanctioned marriage by according huge financial benefits to middleclass couples, the state may be contributing to the outcast status of another group in our society--those who do not choose to marry.  
CONCLUSION  
In Loving, the Supreme Court recognized that the state may not infringe the freedom to choose to marry. (217) In that case, Mildred Jeter Loving and Richard Perry Loving were able to marry in D.C., but they could not return to Virginia to consummate that marriage without facing a prison sentence. (218) By exposing them to criminal sanctions, the state clearly "infringed" their freedom to marry. The question raised by that case is: "How much action is required by the state to constitute an infringement?" Now that same-sex couples can marry, what penalties will be imposed upon them (and other couples) if they seek to choose not to get married? James Obergefell would not be able to be named as the surviving spouse on his partner John Arthur's death certificate. (219) Edie Windsor would face a hefty estate tax bill when her partner Thea Spyer died. (220) April DeBoer and Jayne Rowse would face the possibility of each of their children becoming orphans upon the death of one of them, rather than being raised by the other partner. (221) Army Reserve Sergeant First Class Ijpe DeKoe would face the risk that, if he died in combat, his partner Thomas Kostura would not receive state government financial support. (222) The Obergefell Court said that criminal sanctions are not necessary in order to infringe liberty. "Outlaw to outcast may be a step forward, but it does not achieve the full promise of liberty." (223) The Loving decision protected the marital couple from facing criminal sanctions for expressing their love through marriage, but the liberty to marry clearly means more than being free from criminal sanctions.  
The Obergefell decision furthers marriage equality and the freedom to marry by allowing same-sex couples greater access to the state-sponsored dignity of marriage. State and federal governments, however, undermine the freedom to choose to man y by attaching so many material benefits to the decision to marry. One hopes that Edith Windsor and Thea Spyer went to Canada to be married out of a desire to express their love and commitment to each other--"the hope of companionship and understanding and assurance that while both still live there will be someone to care for the other." (224) There is no reason to believe that they married in order to help Windsor later escape a hefty estate tax bill. (225) We will truly have the freedom to marry when people choose marriage out of love rather than as a way to attain state-sanctioned material gain.  
Although it is difficult to prove that less state pressure to marry will cause people to marry more frequently for reasons such as love and commitment, rather than instrumental reasons, a recent sociological survey of couples in New Zealand offers some modest hope. (226) Professors Maureen Baker and Vivienne Elizabeth report that, in New Zealand, where marriage has lost most of its legal value, couples have found that they can use a wedding ceremony to "reflect personal values and lifestyles" (227) although, in some instances, they choose to maintain some traditionally gendered aspects of the wedding ceremony. State neutrality towards marriage has not entirely caused the traditional vestiges of gender norms within marriage to vanish. It has, however, facilitated couples in finding more space to express their individual values within marriage. Baker and Elizabeth also report that many opposite-sex couples choose to enter civil unions, and not marriages, out of concern for the "religious connotations or gendered traditions" of marriage. (228) Because marriage has no legal value, couples are able to make long-term commitments as part of a civil union without legal penalty. The absence of marriage having legal value facilitates the choice to marry and fosters individual expression within the institution of marriage.  
Now that the Supreme Court has opened up the state-sanctioned institution of marriage to same-sex couples, we should ask ourselves how we can best ensure that couples enter that institution to attain "the hope of companionship and understanding." (229) Everyone benefits when individuals enter the institution of marriage solely as an expression of mutual love and long-term commitment rather than out of a desire to attain instrumental gain from the government. Individuals will only experience true marriage equality when the freedom to marry includes the freedom not to marry. "I don't" should become as well respected as "I do."   
(Citation): Colker, Ruth. "The freedom to choose to marry." Columbia Journal of Gender and Law, vol. 30, no. 2, 2015, p. 383+. Gale In Context: Opposing Viewpoints, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A459985793/OVIC?u=desl63601&sid=OVIC&xid=3d6f989b. Accessed 1 Oct. 2019.

Body & Soul - The inside scoop on mating, dating and relating; Cover Story I OUTSOURCED MY DIVORCE! Ending a marriage sucks - but a little less for those who can pay breakup pros to carry their emotional baggage DIVIDE & CONQUER

AFTER a heartbreaking divorce, every molehill feels like a mountain. Luckily, you can outsource much of the hiking.  
For Lori Bookstein, 58, personal finances were a nightmare after her split from her husband of 32 years.  
"I needed to get my own credit card," Bookstein tells The Post. But at the bank, the art gallerist says, "I couldn't get one because I didn't have any debt or history of borrowing. I felt like I was in some alternate universe."  
For Gundula Brattke, 58, the goal was to stop being "bitter" after she caught her husband of 12 years having an affair with her best friend.  
"I had already been through the trenches," says Brattke, who moved from her home in the Berkshires to Park Slope. "[But] the struggle doesn't end with the divorce."  
So the women did what any sane New Yorker with the means to would do: They found pros to help them vanish the pains of divorce away.  
For divorces, there's no shortage of local resources aimed at untangling the knots that crop up in the aftermath of a dissolved marriage. There's Onward, a new concierge service that, for $150 and up, will consult the newly single about the mundane logistics of breakups, from finding a new rental fast to getting your name off your ex's utilities. There's also Worthy, a New York-based digital-friendly gem auctioneer that promises divorcing women fair prices for their engagement diamonds without the sketch factor of 47th Street. Google results show about a dozen divorce coaches and concierges (with offices in Manhattan) who help clients with everything from packing up their apartments to unpacking their emotional baggage.  
Bookstein, who says she was "clueless" about money at the time, turned to Karen Bigman, a k a the "Divorcierge," a Columbia Business School graduate who's put her finance and management savvy to work for men and women going through divorce.  
"A lot of women make the same deal: 'I'll take care of the house and the kids and you take care of the money,' never imagining that they will get divorced," says Bigman. So she walks clients through everything from paying bills to divvying up their investment portfolios.  
Bigman's help doesn't come cheap: Her fees start at $15,000 for six months of service. But the fixer says it evens out in the grand scheme, and besides, her clients really need it: Lots of the people she works with, she says, "have no clue how to sign into their bank account."  
Her fellow divorce pros are equally willing to hold their clients' hands.  
"I'm part shrink, part coach, part surrogate spouse, part anything you want me to be," says Betsy Cox, 55, the divorce concierge behind Blackbook Divorce. For $350 an hour, Cox - who also has a scripted TV show in the works - spends her days doing whatever her high-net-worth clients need, be that laundry or setting up a date with another divorce from her ritzy Rolodex, compiled during a stint in client relations at an Arab bank.  
"I had a client who would say, 'Come and meet me at this bar at 8 a.m.,' " says Cox. "He'd start having drinks, and I'd have to act like I didn't realize he was an alcoholic. From there, we would go looking for an apartment. Then we would need to furnish it ... I basically became his wife."  
Another client had her play housemaid at his posh Soho apartment while he wined and dined a new squeeze. She "played housekeeper," and cooked pasta and filet mignon while the couple flirted.  
Aside from acting as a sort of matchmaking TaskRabbit, Cox helps clients navigate the legal, financial and emotional web of divorce. She teaches her female clients "who have spent the last 20 years having lunch" about how to start their careers during life's second act. "Most of them become real-estate brokers," she says, noting that she also specializes in finding her clients off-market apartments after their splits.  
Of course, there's more to the aftermath of a divorce than logistical complications and bureaucracy - there's the emotional stuff, too.  
"It's a true life crisis," says Liza Caldwell, a divorce coach who runs a breakup counseling service called SAS for Women.  
Jamie Dillard, 37, found Caldwell - whose fees range from $300-plus per hour for private coaching to $1,000 for three months of virtual consultation - after her husband of 10 years left suddenly.  
"I didn't know how to be alone," she says. "I had never lived alone in my life. My identity was so wrapped up in the marriage."  
Dillard says that Caldwell addressed her divorce holistically, and helped her break down this "life challenge" into a pie chart with each slice representing a part of her identity that was affected.  
"She asked me to take some deep breaths and get in touch with what was going on in my body," says Dillard. "She asked what I felt and where that feeling was in my body. She asked about its texture and what its color was. And she asked, 'What is its name?' I immediately started crying, because I realized you carry a sense of shame, guilt and trauma like a piece of luggage."  
Dillard says Caldwell's practical and emotionally supportive coaching allowed her to look inward and shed "the trauma of emotional and spiritual abuse" instead of panicking over lawyers or money.  
"I started taking guitar lessons again," she says. "I threw myself more into my career. I moved firms and got a promotion. I was bright, bright blond for 15 years and I dyed my hair brunette. I purged everything in the house. Everything that was colorful, I changed to white. I want my surroundings to feel clean and different. Suddenly, I am running in Central Park and I am going to SoulCycle. I became a 'yes' person."  
For some women, healing is as simple as finding a network of new friends - a well-curated one, ideally.  
To move past the pain from her split, Brattke joined UNtied, a membership-based organization based out of founder Elise Pettus' posh Brooklyn Heights townhouse. Sort of like the Wing for divorced women, UNtied - on the cheap end of the services for divorced ladies, at $35 per month - hosts wine and cheese nights, workshops and expert-led panel discussions on such topics as how to hire a lawyer, parenting difficult teens and sex in midlife.  
Having friends, it turns out, was all that Brattke really needed to get her groove back. She joined Bumble with the help of UNtied experts, and is now happily in a relationship. She's even founded her own company: Ski Souls, a travel company that hosts luxury group ski and snowboard trips for solo travelers.  
"Meeting other women in the same situation I was in opened my eyes to the fact that I didn't have to be in misery by myself," says Brattke. "It was life-changing."  
THE DIVORCE FORCE!  
Meet the fixers helping NYC divorcees navigate life after marriage.  
LIZA CALDWELL - The founding partner of SAS for Women specializes in tackling the emotional and spiritual crises brought on by divorce.  
KAREN BIGMAN - The Divorcierge, as she's dubbed herself, helps her clients get a handle on their finances after a split.  
ELISE PETTUS - The founder of divorcee club UNtied brings newly single women together for networking and panel discuss  
ccameron@nypost.com 

(Citation) : "Body & Soul - The inside scoop on mating, dating and relating; Cover Story I OUTSOURCED MY DIVORCE! Ending a marriage sucks - but a little less for those who can pay breakup pros to carry their emotional baggage DIVIDE & CONQUER." New York Post [New York, NY], 7 Mar. 2019, p. 031. Gale In Context: Opposing Viewpoints, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A577407832/OVIC?u=desl63601&sid=OVIC&xid=cc003330. Accessed 1 Oct. 2019.  
******************************************************************  
Delaware Has Banned Marriage Under Age 18. Other States Also Consider Limits.

By Amy Harmon and Alan Blinder   
State lawmakers across the country are moving to raise the minimum age to marry, out of growing concern that lax marriage laws may be contributing to sex trafficking and to children being forced to marry against their will.

Delaware became the first state to ban marriage for anyone under age 18 when the governor signed the measure last week. In the other 49 states, current law allows minors to marry, generally with parental consent or judicial approval. At least 20 states have no minimum age set by statute.

But over the past two years, seven states have raised their minimum marriage age to 16 or 17, and at least seven more are considering legislation to tighten their rules.

Lawmakers in Missouri, with a reputation as the easiest state in the nation for marrying a 15-year-old, moved ahead this week with a bill to ban the marriage of anyone under 16. A measure similar to Delaware’s has passed the State Senate in New Jersey, and this week a legislator in Utah, where children may marry at 15, suggested a ban on marriage before age 18, which advocates consider the gold standard.

“There is significant national momentum, and the pace of change is quickening,’’ said Jeanne Smoot, senior counsel for public policy and strategy at Tahirih Justice Center, a nonprofit advocacy group that favors tighter limits. “States are realizing that so long as laws remain on their books that may actually facilitate the forced marriage of a child, they need to consider themselves accountable.’’

Data that the group collected from public records in 41 states showed that between 2000 and 2015, more than 200,000 minors were married.

Experts on family law and advocates for women say that early marriage imposes social, educational and financial burdens on teenage girls. Because as minors they may lack the legal standing to file for divorce, experts say, many find themselves trapped in abusive relationships. The testimony of several survivors of child marriages has helped galvanize the movement to close marriage-law loopholes.

But some legislators and religious groups have argued that the stricter marriage laws infringe on religious freedom and parents’ rights. Some have argued that in the case of a pregnancy, a teenage mother would benefit from being married. Last year, Chris Christie, a Republican who was governor of New Jersey, conditionally vetoed a bill that would have banned marriage for children under 18, on the ground that it did not “comport with the sensibilities” or “religious customs” of some residents.

In addition to banning anyone under 16 from marrying, the bill pending in Missouri would prohibit 16- or 17-year-olds from marrying anyone over 21. Girls are often wed to older men in marriages that are arranged by families.

“We always want to respect parental and religious rights, but we want to protect children,” said State Representative Jean Evans, a Republican from the St. Louis area who wrote the bill.

Ms. Evans said that legislators had grown alarmed about the possibility that the state’s laws were helping sex traffickers avoid prosecution, and that for many Missouri residents, child marriages were just “not something they see every day or hear about.”

“Quite honestly, the press has been very helpful,” she said. “We came into work one Monday, and the front page of The Kansas City Star, sitting in the back of the chamber, was about a 15-year-old marrying their rapist.”

In Virginia, which passed a law similar to the Missouri bill in 2016, the effect was clear. The year before, 182 minors were married in the state, but the year after, the figure fell to 13, and most of those were 17 years old.

Even so, Fraidy Reiss, the executive director of Unchained at Last, an advocacy group for women and girls in forced marriages, criticized the legislation for continuing to fail to protect the majority of children at risk.

She cited figures for 2013 showing that 20 children married in Missouri who were 15 or younger, while more than 200 were 16 or 17.

“When you’re trying to end a human rights abuse, it’s illogical to carve out an exception for the people most likely to be affected,’’ Ms. Reiss said of the Missouri bill. “This is a far cry from ending child marriage.’’

Ms. Evans said she had hoped for a bill that would have banned marriages outright for children--“You’ve got to be 18 to sign a contract, so in my mind, you should be 18 to get married”--but that she acquiesced to concerns about religious traditions in which people marry young.

A spokesman for Gov. Eric Greitens of Missouri did not respond to a request for comment about Ms. Evans’s plan.  
(Citation): Harmon, Amy, and Alan Blinder. "Delaware has Banned Marriage Under Age 18. Other States also.." New York Times (Online), 17 May 2018. sirsissuesresearcher, https://0-explore-proquest-com.archway.searchmobius.org/sirsissuesresearcher/document/2264159616?accountid=67764.  
*****************************************  
In a TV Comedy, Egyptian Women Gain a Voice on Marriage  
Cairo--It's rare in Egypt's pop culture to get a direct and frank look inside the minds of Egyptian women and what they really think of marriage and love. So a TV comedy became a startling voice in this conservative society's debate over the changing role of women.  
The show, "I Want to Get Married," makes a simple point, but one that resounds strongly: Women want to be an active part of the process of finding a life partner, not passive objects whose fate is to be decided by their mothers, fathers or suitors.  
The message made it a hit among Egyptians--that and the humor it mined from the quirks of Egyptian middle-class matchmaking, where suitors file through the family salons of potential brides to check them out, confident with the expectation that every woman, particularly those above 30, will be eager to snap them up.  
"How is it that someone comes to meet you in the salon, and then by the third visit you have to be ready to talk about the dowry, wedding jewelry and date for a wedding?" said Ghada Abdel-Aal, the author who inspired the sitcom with a blog and book by the same name, based largely on her own experiences. "And you as the girl are just expected to accept that this is your fate without even knowing who the person really is."  
In one episode from the show, the heroine Ola is introduced to what seems to be the perfect suitor. Handsome, cultured, well-mannered, he has a good job and lives in Italy. Giddy that her long search may be ending, she then discovers the catch: He's already married to an Italian woman. His mother, he explains, wants him to take a second, Egyptian wife--he's allowed four wives under Egypt's Islamic-based laws--to force him to spend more time back home in Egypt.  
As a furious Ola and her parents throw him out of their home, his mother snorts: "We don't need you. There's a lot of families and even more available girls."  
The show, which ran during the Islamic holy of month of Ramadan, is a sort of counter-voice in what Egyptian media have blared as the country's "marriage crisis."

Traditionally, grooms in Egypt must pay heavy expenses, including buying an apartment and providing money up front to the bride. But with the economy ailing and poverty widespread, men are having a harder time affording the costs and are waiting longer to marry. At the same time, there are fears that the number of unmarried women in their 30s is growing, apparently because men, when they do finally wed, choose younger brides.  
In the country's debate over the marriage crisis, women often bear the brunt of the blame, with men complaining that they make too many financial demands or are too choosy about their groom's personality. The expectation has become that if they don't want to become a spinster--a word often thrown about in Egypt for any unmarried woman over 30--women should just acquiesce.  
"I Want to Get Married," both the TV show and Abdel-Aal's 2008 book, is a defiant defense of a woman's right to be picky. It argues that women, particularly because they are becoming more educated and gaining positions in the working world, have the right to hold out for a husband who sees them as a real partner.  
"If Ola's goal was just to get married, she would have accepted the first man to enter her life," the 30-year-old (and unmarried) Abdel-Aal said of her main character. "But when she realizes that he is not suitable, either due to his mentality or education level or character, she refuses him and moves on. She is looking for someone who will help to complete her life.  
"Many women came up to me after I wrote the book to say they saw themselves in the main character," Abdel-Aal said.  
Reham Mohsen is an example of a woman who is under pressure to settle.  
The 32-year-old Mohsen, who was the first and only person in her extended, middle-class family to earn a master's degree, says her parents came from a generation that placed great importance on the education of their daughters and on encouraging them to work. But, she says, those same parents--and the sons they were raising--didn't seem to realize what this progressive decision meant in terms of developing their daughters' character.  
"My parents don't see the problem with me accepting to marry someone with a vocational diploma and who earns $9 a month," Mohsen said.  
Mohsen said a male friend once told her he wasn't interested in a woman who talked back.  
"He told me, 'If I wanted someone with an opinion, I'd go to the cafe where my male friends hang out,' " Mohsen said.  
All the pressure lies on the woman in the marriage process, she told the Associated Press.  
"We have to be educated, virginal, able to cook, clean, speak several languages, be prepared to serve his family, raise his kids well, and on top of that have a  
good job to financially contribute in the household," she said.  
Dana Sabah, an Egyptian academic whose thesis studied unmarried women in Jordan, said Abdel-Aal's book "gave a voice to the girls who were suffering a real, yet intangible pressure--something that was there and felt but couldn't really be spoken of."  
Although women's ages at marriage in many places around the world might be rising because of economic and social changes, "in the Arab world, society speaks about it in terms of something being wrong with the girl herself and a negative phenomenon that's taking over the society," she said.  
Unmarried and 40 herself, she said that society continues to view unmarried women either as the caretaker at home or available at work at any time "because the only valid norm is to be a wife and mother, and so there is a perception you have no life otherwise."  
Hanan Kholoussy, a historian at the American University in Cairo who studies marriage in Egypt, casts doubt on whether a marriage crisis even exists; studies on the subject are sketchy. Instead, she says such debates about marriage routinely pop up in Egypt, particularly in times of crisis.  
"This is a way to critique Egyptian society and the growing materialism, especially Egyptian women and their families for their financial demands in marriage," she said.  
Abdel-Aal, who says she's still hoping to marry, said the show brought her criticism for being "crass" for showing women, expected to be modest and let their families handle the process of their engagement, making demands for their spouse.  
"In the Arab world, only men are allowed to talk or write about marriage, and when he speaks of it he is always complaining and unhappy," she said. "If a woman complains, she is being shameful, and if she desires marriage, then she is shameful."  
(Citation): Al-Shalchi, Hadeel. "In a TV Comedy, Egyptian Women Gain a Voice on Marriage."Washington Post, 17 Oct 2010. sirsissuesresearcher, https://0-explore-proquest-com.archway.searchmobius.org/sirsissuesresearcher/document/2262947080?accountid=67764.  
**************************************************

 

Husband and Wife Definition  
A man and woman who are legally married to one another and are thereby given by law specific rights and duties resulting from that relationship.  
The U.S. legal concept of marriage is founded in English Common Law. Under common law, when a man and woman married, they became a single person in the eyes of the law—that person being the husband. The duties and benefits afforded a married woman, as well as the restrictions on her freedom, reflected this view. Even today, although the EqualProtection Clause provides that no state shall "deny to any person within its jurisdiction the Equal Protection of the laws"(U.S. Const. amend. 14, § 1), the U.S. Supreme Court has never interpreted this to mean that states must treat husbands and wives the same.  
There is a strong public policy in favor of marriage. Because of this, a husband and wife are not always able to determine their duties and privileges toward one another; instead, these rights and responsibilities are set forth by special legal principles that define the parameters within which husbands and wives must act.  
Support  
Under common law, because it was unusual for a wife to have a job and earn her own money, a husband was obliged to provide his wife with "necessaries"—which included food, clothing, and shelter—but only the necessities he deemed appropriate. Today, judges have taken the support obligation further and construed the term necessary to include any item in furtherance of an established standard of living.  
Most jurisdictions make it a criminal offense for a spouse to fail to meet a support obligation. Criminal nonsupport statutes are created to prevent men and women from becoming public charges and are most frequently applied upon the dissolution of a marriage when a spouse does not meet Alimony and Child Support obligations. Actions for support are rarely initiated by men although today an equal obligation of support applies.  
Property  
Historically, wives were at a disadvantage as property owners. At common law, when a woman married, her personal possessions were considered to be the property of her husband. In addition, the husband was entitled to use the land she owned or subsequently inherited, and to retain rents and profits obtained from it. A married woman's right to own property was not incorporated into U.S. law until the mid-nineteenth century, with the Married Women's Property Acts. These laws allowed husbands to permit their spouses to own separate property. Women were also granted the right to enter contracts,sell land, write wills, sue and be sued, work without their husband's permission and keep their earnings, and in certain jurisdictions sue for injuries caused by their husbands.  
Ordinarily, questions of who owns what property are brought to court only when a couple is obtaining a Divorce. Courts are otherwise reluctant to become involved in property disputes between a husband and wife. Various systems exist in the UnitedStates to determine who owns property in a marriage: a majority of states recognize separate property, whereas some adhere to Community Property or equitable distribution doctrines.  
The rule in separate-property states is that each person owns whatever items are in his or her name. In these states, various types of joint spousal ownership are recognized. A Tenancy by the Entirety is a form of joint ownership whereby the husband and wife own all the property together. This type of arrangement ordinarily applies to real estate. In a tenancy by the entirety, neither spouse can sell the property or his or her interest in it independently. If the husband or wife dies, the remaining spouse has full survivorship rights.  
In states that adhere to community property laws, the husband and wife are each given an equal interest in everything they own with the exception of the separate property of either individual. A majority of the property obtained by a husband and wife during a marriage is considered community property. State law defines precisely what is considered separate property.In general, separate property includes whatever each party brought to the marriage and anything either spouse individually inherits during the marriage.  
Equitable distribution is a method of property distribution that considers both the economic and noneconomic contributions of each spouse to the marital relationship, as well as each spouse's needs. It is based on the theory that a marriage should be regarded as a partner-ship of equal individuals.  
Disputes over property ownership may arise when one spouse dies. A majority of jurisdictions have eliminated the common-law rights of Dower and curtesy, which require that a spouse receive a specific portion of an estate. As an alternative, when one party leaves a will that disinherits her or his spouse, the survivor ordinarily has the right to acquire an elective share of the estate, which typically amounts to approximately one-third of its value. In some jurisdictions, this right is given only to a surviving wife. Elective shares do not prevent the dissipation of an estate prior to death.In separate-property states, if a husband or wife dies intestate (without leaving a will), statutes provide for the surviving spouse to acquire a specified portion of the decedent's property. A statute might, for example, prescribe that the surviving spouse can acquire a one-half interest in the estate. The size of the portion depends on whether there are surviving children.  
The distribution of property between a husband and wife might also be affected by a premarital agreement, also called an antenuptial or prenuptial agreement. Premarital agreements are typically entered into by a man and woman before they are married, to arrange for the distribution or preservation of property owned by each spouse in the event of divorce or death.  
Sexual Relationship  
The most unique aspects of the relationship between a husband and wife are the legal sanctions attached to their sexualrelationship. A number of states will grant a divorce based on the ground that a husband or wife was denied sex by his or herspouse. Similarly, an individual is ordinarily able to obtain an Annulment if his or her spouse is unable to engage in sexualrelations. The right of the state to interfere with the marital sexual relationship is limited by the U.S. Constitution as interpreted by the Supreme Court.  
In the landmark case of griswold v. connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, 85 S. Ct. 1678, 14 L. Ed. 2d 510 (1965), the Court held that state statutes cannot unreasonably intrude into the marital sexual relationship. In this case, Connecticut was not allowed to enforce a statute that made it a crime for a physician to counsel married people on Birth Control. This was viewed as an unreasonable intrusion into the marital sexual relationship, since the sanctity of the marital relationship would be invaded if the statute were enforced. The Court emphasized the significance and constitutional considerations of privacy in marriage.  
It was once thought that the degree of privacy to which a married couple is entitled could be restricted. Although some statestatutes have used this reasoning to attempt to prohibit certain sex acts between a husband and wife, such as anal and oralsex, most courts have maintained that married couples have a constitutional privacy right over their marital sexual activities(Lovisi v. Zahradnick, 429 U.S. 977, 97 S. Ct. 485, 50 L. Ed. 2d 585 [1976] [mem]).  
A husband and wife have the right to purchase and use birth control devices—although when an individual uses contraceptives or becomes sterilized contrary to his or her spouse's wishes, this might provide grounds for annulment or divorce.  
Abortion has been viewed as an additional restriction on the sexual rights of a husband and wife. A wife's right to chooseabortion takes precedence over the husband-and-wife relation-ship. A husband may not preclude his wife from having a legalabortion, nor may he compel her to have one. The Supreme Court struck down statutory requirements that a husband mustbe notified of his wife's abortion, in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833, 112 S. Ct. 2791, 120 L. Ed. 2d 674 (1992).  
At one time, a husband was allowed to have sexual relations with his wife with or without her consent, and for many years,courts supported a marital exception to laws against rape. Under current law, the fact that the accused party and the victim were husband and wife can no longer be used as a defense to criminal charges. Violent assaults on a spouse are illegal in all states. A savage rape attack by a husband on his wife might be subject to prosecution as an assault or, in some cases, as anattempted murder.  
Crimes  
Common law put many restrictions on a husband and wife when crimes occurred between them or against the marriage relationship itself. At one time, the courts recognized lawsuits based on Heart Balm Acts. In such an action, a husband asserted that a monetary recovery would salve the "broken heart" caused by a third party's intrusion into his marriage. The basis for many of these causes of action was that a husband was being denied his rights to the affections and services of his wife; these lawsuits did not extend to a wife.  
A husband once had an actionable injury if anyone induced his wife to leave him, under the theory that he was entitled to sue for damages any person who divested him of a servant. Similarly, a husband was able to bring an action for criminal conversation if his wife voluntarily engaged in Adultery. The theory was that criminal conversation interferes with a husband's exclusive privilege to obtain sexual services from his wife. The basis of recovery is the public policy in favor of preserving marriage and the family. Alienation of affection is another seldom prosecuted action. In this type of action, a husband must prove that another man won his wife away from him, thereby depriving him of love, comfort, and companionship.  
Because of the theories that gave rise to such causes of action, very few jurisdictions recognize lawsuits based on heartbalm acts.Yet, even today, Tort Law retains some special rules for husbands and wives when an outsider causes injury to the marital or family relationship. Consortium is the marital relationship between two people that encompasses their mutual right to support, cooperation, and companionship. An action for loss of consortium is based on the inconvenience of having a debilitated spouse. Husbands and wives have won suits for damages for injuries to their spouse precipitated by such things as Medical Malpractice, automobile accidents, False Imprisonment, and Wrongful Death.  
Under common law, a husband was held responsible for any crimes committed by his wife against a third party. Although a wife had responsibility for crimes she committed, there was a legal presumption that her husband compelled her to perform any act she undertook when he was present. Today, husbands and wives are equally liable for their own criminal actions.  
Privileged Communication  
The law of evidence includes a privilege extended to a married couple so that neither a husband nor a wife can be compelled to testify against a spouse. This rule was designed to protect intrafamily relations and privacy. In addition, it was meant to promote communication between husbands and wives by making revelations between them strictly confidential.  
In 1980, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Trammel v. United States, 445 U.S. 40, 100 S. Ct. 906, 63 L. Ed. 2d 186, held that husbands and wives were permitted to testify against one another voluntarily in a federal criminal prosecution. Many states now allow a spouse to testify against a husband or wife, but with the caveat that the testimony is subject to the accused spouse's consent. Other states view the spouse of an accused person as an ordinary witness who can be forced to testify against the accused person.  
Domestic Abuse  
It was once presumed that a husband should have the right to exert physical control over his wife, if only to protect himself from liability for his wife's actions. Therefore, common law permitted a husband to discipline his wife physically. Interspousaltort immunity made it impossible for a wife to succeed in an action against her husband. It was rare for a wife to accuse her husband of a crime, and a wife was forbidden to testify against her husband. Today, a wife is almost always permitted to testify against a husband who has been accused of causing intentional injury to her or their child. With interspousal tor immunity all but abrogated in most jurisdictions, husbands and wives can now recover in suits against one another under the theories of fraudulent Misrepresentation, Battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and Negligence.  
The common-law right of a husband to discipline his wife combined with interspousal tort immunity prevented incidents of domestic abuse from becoming public. In addition, victims of domestic abuse often did not reveal the extent of their injuries for fear of reprisals. Little legal relief was available, as courts were hesitant to interfere in the husband-and-wife relationship.With the abrogation of interspousal tort immunity, the U.S. public has become aware of domestic abuse as a nationwide issue.  
In some cases, victims of domestic abuse who have injured or killed their spouse as a means of Self-Defense against violence and abuse have been acquitted of criminal charges. The battered spouse syndrome is a defense these men and women have asserted. The syndrome, a subcategory of post-traumatic stress disorder, seeks to explain why some spouses remain in abusive relationships and others finally use violence to break out of such relationships. Because battered women are typically economically dependent on their husband, they hesitate to seek help until the violence escalates to the point where they believe the only way to free themselves is to kill their abuser.  
Same-Sex Marriage  
In the 1980s and early 1990s, lawsuits were initiated to expand the traditional husband-and-wife relationship, and the rightsand privileges that relationship conveys, to partners of the same sex. In a landmark case, Baehr v. Lewin, 74 Haw. 645, 852P.2d 44 (1993), the Hawaii Supreme Court, although rejecting the idea that the Hawaii Constitution gives same-sex couples afundamental right to marriage, held that Hawaii's marriage statute (Haw. Rev. Stat. § 572-1) discriminates on the basis of sexby barring people of the same sex from marrying. As a result, such statutes are subject to Strict Scrutiny. However, in 1998Hawaiian voters overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment that, while not banning same-sex marriage, gave thelegislature the power to restrict marriages to opposite-sex couples.  
In 1996, largely in response to Baehr, Congress passed the Defense of Marriage Act (110 Stat. § 2419), which defines marriage as "a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife." The term spouse is defined as a"person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife." In effect, the Defense of Marriage Act states that the federalgovernment does not acknowledge same-sex marriages.  
In 2001, however, Vermont became the first state to enact a law recognizing "civil unions" between same-sex couples (23V.S.A. § 1201 et seq. [2000]). The 2000 law came in response to a 1999 Vermont Supreme Court ruling (Baker v. Vermont,170 Vt. 194, 744 A.2d 864 [1999]), which found that the benefits and protections guaranteed by the Vermont Constitution foropposite-sex couples extend to same-sex couples. Benefits and protections include access to a spouse's medical, life, and disability insurance; hospital visitation, and other medical decision-making privileges; spousal support; and the ability to inherit property from a deceased spouse without a will.


	10. Chapter 10

Definition Essay Pre-writing Assignment  
Name:  
Please answer the following questions. Then save your work and upload it.  
The purpose of this assignment is to help you clarify and organize your ideas. There are many ways to organize your body paragraphs, and the organization style depends on your topic and the information you’re presenting. Remember Chapter 5 of Good Reasons provides some solid strategies for drafting and revising.  
Remember you need to use three sources in your essay and in your Works Cited page. In this pre-writing assignment, be sure to use in-text citations as needed.  
Introduction:  
What’s your opening hook?

Explain the issue or controversy surrounding your word/definition.

What background information do your readers need to know?

 

What’s your thesis? Remember it should follow this general template: (_______ is (is not) a ________ because it has (or does not have) features A, B, or C (or more) 

 

Body:  
What evidence or examples do you have to support your definition? (Give at least three)

 

Who do you think would disagree with your definition? Why would they disagree/how do they benefit from a different definition? 

Conclusion:  
There are many different strategies that could work for a conclusion. You could discuss what’s at stake or the implications of your definition. Or you could present a new definition for your word (like the student sample in the text pp. 113-117). Tell me which strategy you think you’re going to use in your paper. What do you want to cover in your conclusion? 

Works Cited:  
Please give the Works Cited citations for the sources you want to use in your paper.  
************************************************************************************************

Definition Essay Assignment Sheet  
Write a 4-5 page definition essay where you make a definitional claim on a controversial issue that focuses on a key term. You need to include at least three sources, both in your essay and in a Works Cited page. At least one source must be from a library database. The rest of your sources may be from websites, but they must be from reputable sponsors (For example, something from the Red Cross website would be fine, but quote websites, Wikipedia, etc. are not).  
You will need to choose a term and criteria, and explain how your term meets all the criteria.  
Your essay should be in MLA format.  
Tips for Writing a Definition Essay:  
• In your introduction, explain the issue, concept, or controversy, and give any necessary background information.  
• End your introduction with a thesis that fits the following template: ________ is (or is not) a _________because it has (or does not have) features A, B, and C.  
• Example: Segregation laws are unjust laws because they are not consistent with moral law, damage human personality, only apply to certain people, and are not made by democratically elected officials.  
 In the body of your essay, explain your criteria and argue for the appropriateness of the criteria. Anticipate where readers may question your criteria. Address opposing views by acknowledging how their definitions differ and by showing why your definition is better.  
 In your conclusion, discuss what is at stake or implications for your definition. 

 

Your essay will be evaluated on the following:  
 The introduction provides a clear understanding of the topic  
 The thesis is clear and in the appropriate format  
 The organization is logical with smooth transitions  
 MLA is correct in the format in the essay and citations  
 The definition’s criteria are specific and are explained clearly and fully  
 The writer has anticipated and addressed likely objections to the definition  
 The essay displays critical thinking and original ideas  
 The essays displays audience awareness  
 The conclusion leaves the reader with something interesting  
 Grammar/mechanics are correct and the essay is easy to read  
Essays with fewer than three sources (cited in both the essay and a Works Cited page) or with sources from disreputable sources will earn an F.


End file.
